Panache
by conception.creation
Summary: When Bartimaeus' master sends him out to win him the hand of a beautiful commoner, he doesn't expect the djinni to fall for her himself. Based on the play Cyrano de Bergerac. Very AU. B/K
1. A Duel of Wits

CHAPTER 1: A Duel of Wits

Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is the Property of Jonathan Stroud. Cyrano de Bergerac was written by Edmond Rostand, but technically since it's in the public domain it belongs to all of us. ^^

A/N: The bare-bones plot from this story was shamelessly stolen from my favourite play, _Cyrano de Bergerac_ by Edmond Rostand. I've always thought Bartimaeus was a bit like Cyrano, and couldn't help but write this once the idea bit. Be warned that this is totally AU. And there will be at least one major character death! Betaed as always by the fantastic Lady Noir (A Evans on ffnet).

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"I dunt like this one bit," whined the grating imp at my elbow for the seventeenth time this morning.

The complaint was beginning to loose its effect. When we'd set out on this mission three hours earlier I'd agreed with him whole-heartedly, but by this point I was more interested in shoving him into the nearest mud puddle.

"Yeah, yeah, you don't like it then take it up with the boss."

The imp crossed its arms petulantly, then promptly lost balance atop the armoured car's radio antenna and tumbled into the street. The two of us still left on the roof watched impassively as he shambled frantically after the moving vehicle.

"Remind me again why the Master sent that idiot along with us?" asked the lemur at my side, casually flicking a wasp from her fur.

"Beats me."

The imp was growing more distant, apparently too brain-dead to remember to use its wings to catch up. It flailed its arms wildly in an apparent signal to wait up, and then shrieked as it promptly disappeared down an open manhole.

I sighed in despair. "We should stop for him."

"Bartimaeus…" There was a stern warning in Queezle's voice. We had strict orders to proceed with this delivery without any interruption. As a rule, magicians like to adorn their commands with adjectives like _urgent_, _crucial_ or the eternally popular _top secret_. These assignments rarely live up to their self-important monikers. [1. I still remember Nathaniel's _desperate_ need for a _critical _sandwich _post haste_. I sure wrapped a lot of beetles in his bologna for that one.] But in this case, the tension surrounding the task was entirely justified. The mere thought of what lay safely enclosed in the vehicle beneath us was enough to make any spirit's scaly skin crawl, and it was putting all of us on edge.

Nonetheless, if Stoggles didn't make it back to finish our escort job, Mandrake would finish him. I leaned down and poked my head in through the open driver's side window.

"Hello," I chirped. The human driver's knuckles whitened around the steering wheel. "We've got a man overboard. If you could pull over here for a minute, buddy?"

The driver ducked his head obediently and hit the breaks.

Queezle and I waited in silence for our wayward passenger to make his way back to us. I stretched Ptolemy's arms out over my head and flexed his toes – clinging to the roof of the armoured car was putting a cramp in my essence. Queezle's tail was tapping out an anxious rhythm that reverberated through the metal plating. The enormous reservoir of nervous energy coursing through the normally stoic djinni surprised me, and I wondered if she feared attack.

"Stop following me!" The sound of nearby conflict drew my eye. Across the road, a pretty dark-haired girl was facing off against a tall, leathery skinned spirit who wasn't even bothering to disguise himself on the first plane.

"Did he tell you to watch over me today? Well, tell him if he wants to follow me around like a lovesick puppy then he can do it himself instead of sending some mangy, clod-headed demon after me!"

The spirit loomed over the girl with a leering grin. "Oh ho! Such a temper from Makepeace's pretty little tart! The Master wouldn't like hearing you talk like that; no he wouldn't."

Queezle nudged my shoulder. "You're on duty, don't get distracted," she muttered under her breath. I ignored her warning wholeheartedly.

"Are you threatening me?" the girl growled, "I rather doubt your Master would approve of that, either."

"You gonna tell him if I rough you up a bit? I'll just inform him of his _darling_ commoner's shocking escape attempt. And you don't want that, do you, Kitty? If he didn't trust you, he might not let you go on any more of these innocent little outings." The spirit was cornering the girl, forcing her toward the bland whitewashed wall at her back. She had a hand shoved down into her coat pocket, fist clenched around something unseen.

"Ah, there he is." Queezle's relieved voice barely registered in my brain. The lemur reached out a paw to help the drenched imp clamour aboard, but my eyes were fixed on the drama across the road.

The spirit sauntered closer, his knifelike fingers clenching over the girl's thin shoulders.

"Let's go home, shall we?" The girl made several attempts to wrest herself from his grip. To my surprise, I found myself involuntarily hopping to my feet and shouting obnoxiously at the tableau across the road.

"Hey, idiot! The girl said beat it, so _beat it_!"

The girl, Kitty, glanced up at me. She had sharp, quick eyes that assessed and moved on with lightning speed. In their cunning expression I could see she had street smarts, and she immediately proved it by kicking at the spirit's knees and disappearing into the labyrinthine housing complex behind her. The surprised spirit grasped at thin air, then turned to glare at me.

"_Who_ are _you_?" it shouted rudely.

"Oi, let's get outta 'ere mate," Stoggles said as he bounced nervously at my elbow, "We don't need to be pickin' fights!"

"Just a good Samaritan," I called back, shoving the little imp out of the way, "Who likes to keep big louts like you from bothering pretty girls."

The spirit was swaggering toward the car, which was good from the point of view of the dark-haired girl, but not such a positive development for us. Queezle was looking a bit pale beneath all the black and white fur.

"You're going to get us in trouble, Bartimaeus," she said in a low tone. "Stand down and let's finish the mission."

The lemur yelled in frustration as I leapt off the roof and met the challenger with arms folded casually across my chest.

"You know," I said lightly as the spirit towered over me, "I've been feeling a bit stiff lately. I could use a spot of exercise, and thrashing you should just do the trick."

"Bartimaeus, stop being an idiot!" Queezle yelled.

The spirit leered, showcasing a mouthful of jutting yellow teeth that smelled like old limburger cheese soaked in sewage. "What, you gonna take me all by yourself, Shorty?"

It was an amateur insult if ever I heard one, but nonetheless I was wearing Ptolemy's form and felt the odd urge to defend its honour. I shook my head slowly at the offending spirit.

"Really? _Really?_ You have my entire accumulation of flaws at your disposal and you go with _Shorty_? That's pretty sad. Even if you had to go with height, there's a hundred more creative ways to go about it. Let me help you out. How about the threatening method? _'Watch it, or you'll be crushed under someone's shoe!'_ Or exaggerated: _'I swear a flea could carry you off!'_"

"Shut up!"

I rolled behind the armoured car and managed to save myself from being barbecued by a nasty Inferno from the irate spirit.

"You could try being dramatic," I called helpfully from my hiding place as I began wrapping a bit of fabric from my shirt around my palm. "_'Great heavens! Someone call the hospital! It's a half a man!'_"

Another wild burst of magic shattered the windshield, and I reached under the car and snapped off a long iron rod from the chassis. The poisonous metal felt hot, even through the thick layer of cloth in my hand.

"No? Then how about the curious variant? _'How's the view from down there? I imagine you must be getting well-acquainted with my knees!'_"

The spirit leapt over the car, sailing between my two stunned companions and landing nimbly right in front of me.

"_En garde_," I said, striking an artful fencing pose with my makeshift sword. Without taking his eyes off me, the spirit reached behind his back and broke a windshield wiper from the still-smoking vehicle. He strode toward me in slow, calculated steps, stripping the rubber from the blade in one long peel.

When he was less than a foot away he paused, looming over me with a smoldering expression. I tensed and waited for the blow.

He struck in one sudden fury, nearly knocking me off my feet as I parried. The guy was _massive_. [2. Didn't have much finesse with a blade though. I could tell he hadn't been dueling many musketeers in _his_ career; he was going more for the _smash-it-till-it's-dead_ technique. Here we had your classic battle of skill and finesse versus pure dumb muscle.]

"You could be violent," I continued, swiping low at his feet, "For example: _'They must have pruned you back with hedge clippers to keep you that short.'_ Or cavalier: _'Cheer up buddy, I'm sure you'll hit a growth spurt!'_" Or pedantic: _'It's tragic how your deplorable situation could have been avoided with nothing more than a timely injection of concentrated human growth hormone.'_"

With each new suggestion, I drove him back a little more, keeping close so that he couldn't use his longer reach against me. Sweat rolled down his brow and he stumbled back a few steps.

"Irritating fool!" The spirit clasped his knees and panted hard.

I doffed my cap and bowed low. "Charmed. And I am Bartimaeus of Uruk."

"You impertinent _thing_!" he charged in again and sparks exploded as iron met iron. The creature had biceps like watermelons, and with each blow he was driving me back up the street into oncoming traffic. Cars swerved and screeched to a stop around us, and angry drivers blared their car horns and shouted out of windows.

"How about feigned simplicity?" I suggested, "_'What a sweet little child! Shall I take you home to your nursemaid?' _Or helpful: _'I have a dictionary you could use as a booster seat.' _Rustic: '_It's much too small to be a spirit. An egg or a parsnip perhaps.'_ Practical: _'If only I had ten spirits like you, I could provide the entire city with chimney sweeps!'_"

The spirit was red-faced and furious. With a wild, frantic swing, he twisted the iron rod from my hand and sent it smashing through a shop window. I found my palms suddenly empty and spoke with doubled speed.

"That's what you might have said if you had a shred of intelligence, but we all know who wins the game of brains versus brawn, right mate?"

The spirit tipped his blade up and prepared to run me through.

"Bartimaeus!" Queezle shouted.

I flicked my wrist. A look of subtle confusion was the last expression to grace the creature's face before it was completely incinerated by the strongest Detonation I could muster.

Oily smoke bubbled up from the charred ashes on the sidewalk. Drivers, pedestrians, my spirit companions: everyone stared silently at the dark smear on the pavement and the general chaos around it. Broken windows, smashed fenders, shattered glass like a blanket over the road…the magicians would be hearing about this one.

I bowed to my imaginary applause.

That seemed to break the spell. The lemur collapsed in relief as the busy bustle of the street returned to normal.

"Let's get out of here, you moron," she said fondly.

I groaned. With the way that Inferno had mangled the front of the armoured car, I doubted the driver would manage to get the car going again.

"Are we going to have to push?" I asked meekly.

"We're going to have to push," Queezle confirmed.

Whether what happened next was a blessing or a curse, you'll have to decide. A sound like a shot rattled through the street and a bank of spurting smoke obscured my vision. The poor already-terrorized citizens of London were once again crying out and apparently tripping over each other. In the haze, I managed to get a hold of something fuzzy.

"_Ow!_" Queezle yelped, "That's my eyebrow!"

"Never mind your eyebrow," I said, "Can't you see? Someone's after the weapon!"

Trying not to look frantic, we stumbled toward the vehicle.

"Um…" the armoured car didn't seem to be where we'd left it.

"Bartimaeus, you imbecile! This is the wrong way! Over here!" The djinni yanked my arm, causing us to collapse over a fire hydrant. Ptolemy's face was unceremoniously squashed against the cement, carving out a nice gash in the centre of his forehead. Not that it mattered, seeing as current visibility was approximately zero.

"Enough of this," I said, releasing a Hurricane. The blast of air shot down the sidewalk, peeling away smoke in an instant.

"Queezle…"

"I see it."

Ten or twenty masked figures were crawling over the wreckage of the car like monkeys on a banana tree. Already they had pried back part of the metal roof with some kind of hydraulic metal cutting tool. One black-clad interloper disappeared inside and returned with a small stainless steel case, which passed along their ranks like a fire brigade.

"There making off with it!" Queezle's fur was standing on end. She hurdled herself towards them like a small fuzzy football, shooting off Detonations in mid-air.

The squadron of masked thieves dispersed as the magic bursts fell among them. They scrambled through smoking craters and leapt from the crumbling metal frame as it disintegrated under their feet, but not one fell beneath the magical onslaught.

Resilient. It had been a long time since I'd seen so many in one place.

I ran across the street to help the lemur chase after our absconding attackers, but it was too late. They were disappearing into the twisting alleyways on either side of the road, the geometry of which would have confused M. C. Escher himself. I couldn't tell which of the posse had the case we had been charged to protect. Resigned, I watched them scamper in all directions.

Just before the last member of the group disappeared around the corner, she turned her head and looked back at me. Through the narrow slits in her mask, her eyes caught mine.

They held a certain street-hardened spark that was immediately familiar.


	2. A Parade of Magicians

CHAPTER TWO: A Parade of Magicians

Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is the Property of Jonathan Stroud. Cyrano de Bergerac was written by Edmond Rostand, but technically since it's in the public domain it belongs to all of us. ^^

A/N: One more week until I start my summer job. :s Hugs and a huge thank you to everyone who reviewed last chapter - Random Inspired, The Broken Pentacle, Killer Zebra, Moss, SlyChild, and Nari-nick, all of you are awesome! This chapter, like all chapters, was betaed by the wonderous Lady Noir.

The Egyptian boy hesitated, one finger resting on the cool doorknob. _John Mandrake, Apprentice_, the small brass plaque screwed above the door declared ominously. After my fencing stunt with the spirit, I'd been unanimously voted the bearer of bad news by my annoyed compatriots, and I knew as well as they that Mandrake was not going to be in a forgiving mood. Mentally, I bid farewell to my sorry existence before stepping inside.

The electric lights were switched off. In the small pool of candlelight that fell over his desk, I caught a glimpse of my master's dark-haired, dark-clad form. His head was bowed low with his face buried in his hands, and his long hair flopped forward despondently and obscured his expression. It was a curious posture. I leaned in casually over the desk and tried to peek through that dank curtain of hair.

"What's up boss?" I asked, "You seem mopey."

Nathaniel looked up, his hair parting enough to reveal one baleful, glaring eye.

"It's no concern of yours, Bartimaeus. What's the status of the delivery?"

I wasn't over-eager to end my life by explaining how a rag-tag band of kids in masks had managed to rob us, so I stalled.

"Come on," I said, "You've practically got one of those glum-mood rain clouds hovering over your head. Let me guess. You've got girl troubles. Some pretty wench caught your eye and you're way too cowardly to do anything about it, so you're in here sulking the day away instead."

Nat's answering glower was revealing.

"Oh, really? I've hit on something, have I? I guess you've finally come to that time in your life where I ought to explain about the birds and the bees. Better late than never I always say…"

"_Silence_, Bartimaeus! It's far more complicated than that!"

"And he admits it! This is just delicious. I can't _wait_ to hear what the rest of your servants think of this new development!" I rubbed my hands together in glee. "Maybe Stoggles can help me give you an anatomy lesson."

Nathaniel's usually ghost-like countenance flushed with anger.

"You will hold your tongue if you know what's good for you!" he hissed, "I am not sulking, and I certainly do not need an explanation of _'The birds and the bees'_ as you call them. I am simply having a frustratingly difficult time befriending a young lady I recently met, if you must know."

"_'Befriending'_, huh? Is that what they call it these days? You don't have any friends Natty-boy, and even if you did I doubt you'd know what to do with them. This is one of those hilarious human euphemisms, isn't it?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he said stiffly. He extinguished the candle, sat back in his chair, and looked down his nose at me.

"What happened to you," he suddenly asked, "You look like a mess."

My hand wandered to Ptolemy's forehead, where a sizable gash still decorated his brow. That was sloppy of me. And come to think of it, the hem of my shirt was still torn away and spattered with dirt from the road.

"Why talk about _me _when we could talk about _you_?" I asked hopefully.

"Nice try. Did you run into trouble on the road?"

I took a deep breath in order to spew out my stream of prepared excuses and explanations, but was interrupted by a polite knock on the door.

"Excuse me," Nat's secretary called, poking her head around the door, "Mr. Makepeace is here to see you, sir."

Nathaniel leapt out of his chair and straightened his tie.

"_Now?_ Show him in, thank you Ms. Piper."

My heart sank into my shoes. Time was up and the magicians had gotten to him first. Natty was about to learn my news the hard way.

"Please wait outside, Bartimaeus," Nathaniel said, hurriedly straightening the papers on his desk.

"Are you sure you don't want me to–"

"Out, Bartimaeus!"

I obeyed.

Well, I obeyed about as much as I usually do, which is to say that I turned myself into a small cockroach and settled into the keyhole as soon as I was past the door.

After a few moments Piper returned, leading a tall, rotund magician in the frilliest outfit I had ever seen down the hallway. I poked my antennae out to observe as Makepeace swept into the room, filling it with the scent of daffodils and rosewater.

"John, my boy," he said in a voice pregnant with false affection and concern, "I've just heard the news. It couldn't possibly be true_,_ I thought to myself, and came right down here to hear it from you directly."

Nathaniel managed to blink at him in consternation like a bit of stunned road kill seconds before it's squashed flat.

"I…I apologize Mr. Makepeace, I'm not sure what you…"

"Call me Quentin, dear boy," the magician said, slapping Nat on the back with enough force to dislocate a vertebra. I think it was intentional, too. Nathaniel winced and fled to safety behind his desk.

"Quentin, then. To what do I owe the honour of this visit?"

Makepeace's eyes widened comically. "Have you not heard?"

"What is it?" Nathaniel was trying very unsuccessfully to hide his annoyance.

"Well, then I suppose the duty falls to me." The flamboyant magician paused dramatically to straighten the draping lace of his pink and yellow floral-print frock coat. "Only a few hours ago, we received a report that the escort guarding Whitwell's anti-djinn weaponry was attacked, and the weapons carried off by what we believe to be the Resistance. The escort _you_ provided if I'm not mistaken."

Nathaniel's breath caught. "No," he whispered.

"And that's not the most shocking part." Makepeace leaned in conspiratorially. "I have it on good authority that the Resistance would never have gotten away had a djinni of yours not been distracted by picking fights with one of my own personal servants."

"Y-Yours?"

"I would never hold a grudge of course my dear boy, but understand – the Prime Minister doesn't look so favourably on these types of mishaps." It was a veiled threat, plain as day. Nat gulped.

"Of course not, Mr. Makepeace," he said quickly, "But I'm sure you've explained the situation to him? The rogue spirit will be harshly punished and this sort of thing will never happen again."

"Well, I understand John. But the loss of these weapons is a catastrophe and I'm afraid the Prime Minister is out for blood. You're aware of his conscription plans I suppose?"

Nathaniel paled. "With the army tied up in America, I heard he was thinking of drafting lesser magicians to defend the city from the Resistance if it comes to that. But surely–"

"Surely a magician of your stature would be exempted? Ordinarily you would my boy, but with this ugly business, I'm afraid Devereaux is a hair's breadth away from enlisting you. I managed to convince him to put it off, but I don't know how long I can hold him back."

Translation: _Cross me and die._

"I…understand sir. Thank you for letting me know."

"Anything for you, John," the magician said in his sing-song voice. "Now I'd love to stay and chat but I'm afraid I must get going. There's the dress rehearsal of my latest musical tonight you know."

"Yes, yes. And I'm dying to see it."

"Why, of course you are!" Makepeace cried, "Farewell, my boy! I'll see you opening night." He strolled out of the room with a merry wave, leaving Nathaniel collapsed in his seat, looking stunned and out-of-breath.

Makepeace shut the door firmly behind him, pausing in the hall to fiddle with the chain of his delicate gold pocket watch.

"I know you're there, djinni," he called softly, nearly startling me right out of the keyhole. "Come out, I'd like to have a word with you."

I complied, shifting into Ptolemy's form and eyeing him warily.

"Uh, can I help you?"

Makepeace smiled a sugary smile. "Bartimaeus, is it? Lovely to meet you. I've had a first-hand account of your exploits."

Uh oh, that was never a good thing. I tensed up, ready to fling open the door and sprint for Mandrake's office. Naturally, I was rather surprised when the Magician grabbed my hand and started shaking it enthusiastically.

"Staving off a demon four times your size and three levels higher. Amazing! And such flair, too! I could use a servant like you in my service, and a position just opened this morning if you know what I mean." He winked.

I stared stupidly. "Pardon?"

"I'd like to steal you away. A talented djinni like you needs a worthy employer like myself. A personal request from Devereaux would certainly be enough to convince your master to release you to my service. So how about it?"

I was nothing if not disloyal, and right now Makepeace's offer was sounding pretty nice. Serving a playwright definitely sounded a lot safer than escorting djinn-destroying weapons across town. I could see myself painting set pieces and fetching glasses of perfumed water for spoiled divas. It'd save me from being beheaded by Nat at any rate. The magician beamed at me.

"It's a very simple charge, too," he said, "One I'm sure you'd find easy to accomplish. All I'd require is that you watch over a girl in my care for a few days. She's a bit of a handful, but after a week or so you'd be able to go home."

The _girl_. I remembered the young commoner the deceased spirit had been bullying and immediately my enthusiasm deflated. I wasn't interested in becoming a jailer. Especially not of someone as flawlessly dangerous as I sensed that girl to be.

"Thanks, but I think I'll take my chances with Mandrake," I said.

"–and the two of you would get along perfectly I think…Excuse me, what was that?"

"I'd prefer to stay here."

Makepeace's smile didn't fall precisely, but it loosened around the edges until it became more of a snarl than a smile.

"Impossible! What reason could you possibly have to refuse?"

"You could call it moral compunction. But you'd probably be wrong."

"Come now, I insist!"

"Sorry."

"Let me make this clear." He said, sidling up close, "You have _failed_ your charge. You have _publicly humiliated_ your master. His career is _over_. Next time you set foot in that room you'll be finished. He'll chain you up in silver bonds and throw you in the Thames. He'll peel your skin off from the inside out. He'll blast your bones with the Shriveling Fire – I know how your kind fears that curse! With Mandrake you have no future. With me, you'd have a nice comfortable job and a ticket home. Do you understand?"

I held my ground, staring back at him with arms crossed and feet planted firmly on the ground.

All of a sudden, the man recollected himself.

"Very well," he said. "If you refuse, I won't force the issue. Until next time, djinni."

He bounced away, giggling slightly, humming a ditty under his breath and sweeping his hat off for a passing young intern.

_There goes an incredibly dangerous man,_ I thought.

XXX

I pulled the front door open a crack, timid as a mouse. With good reason, too; no sooner had I poked my head into the room than a hurdled inkwell smashed into the wall by my face, raining shattered glass and thick, gloppy ink.

"_What. Did. You. Do._" Nathaniel hissed through clenched teeth.

"_Erm_…Go for a drive? Cut a dashing figure while teaching a djinni a lesson? Give a pretty girl a hand?" I smiled winningly, but to no effect.

I expected more attempts at physical violence, but instead Nathaniel straightened, tucking his hands behind his back. All that seething rage condensed and disappeared beneath a terrifying, falsely-calm façade.

"Come here, Bartimaeus," he said carefully, "I want to show you something."

I inched forward as he pulled a key out of his desk drawer and sailed toward the safe at the back of the room.

"You've failed in your charge," He said as he fit the key into the lock, "You've caused a national crisis and you've disobeyed me."

"Yeah, sorry about that." I tried to sound contrite.

Nathaniel slid a long metal case from the safe, snapped it open, and set it carefully on his desk. Inside, arranged in eight meticulously neat rows, was something akin to tranquilizer darts. Each was composed of a slender silver tip, a fan-shaped tail, and a tiny clear plastic body filled with shimmering white liquid. Nat lifted one and twirled it gently between his fingers.

"Do you know what this is?" he asked.

"Sure," I said uneasily. "That's a dart full of Whitwell's new toxin."

"Mmhmm. Like the ones you were supposed to be delivering to the airport today. The ones that were _supposed_ to be helping win the war in America." Nat's tone was dangerous and I tried to back away subtly.

"…about that–"

"Tell me, Bartimaeus. What exactly does this lovely liquid do?"

I'd known too many victims of Whitwell's experiments to be ignorant.

"It eats away a spirit's essence from the inside out," I said quietly, "Once you've been pierced there's no escape. Not even the Other Place can save you."

"This weapon is capable of _decimating_ an army of magicians," Nat said, "Do you understand the implications of the Resistance getting their hands on something like this? _Six hundred_ darts, Bartimaeus. We've lost six hundred darts to the insurrectionists. Excluding imps and the like, there are currently less than six hundred spirits serving the government in the _entire country_."

"Ah, so good old Britain's in trouble. Excuse me while I shed a tear."

"I find it interesting that you can be so cavalier when your own life is hanging by a thread." In a swift move, he pinned my arm to the desk, the silver tip of the dart resting millimeters above the skin of my wrist. I could have pulled away – the kid had all the strength of wet tissue paper – but one taste of that dart beneath my skin would spell a slow agonizing death that would be impossible to escape from. I held my breath.

"Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you here," Nathaniel growled.

"Listen Nat," I said in my most placating of tones, "Calm down a minute before you do something rash. I know it looks bad and you're upset. But you can't blame all this on _me_. Well, not entirely. Maybe a little. But hear me out! How many thefts has the Resistance made this year? Fifteen. And how many of those thefts were pulled off successfully? _Fifteen._ They've been pilfering artifacts for months and no one's been able to catch them, as you might have known if you stopped moaning about some broad who doesn't like you and did your job instead."

"You're on thin ice, djinni."

"Come on, why exactly were you sitting here in the dark, wringing your hands instead of watching over Whitwell's precious package? I doubt your superiors will be all that sympathetic when you tell them you were incapacitated by cupid's arrow."

"You don't understand! I love her!" Nat shouted, then immediately clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Oh, do you now?"

The magician turned a sickly shade of white. "Forget it. I don't know why I said that."

"So I was right all along!"

"Leave it Bartimaeus."

"Hey, if it bugs you all that much, just bite the bullet and talk to her."

Nathaniel's grip tightened around my arm. It was a good thing I didn't really need my circulation, because I would definitely have lost all feeling in my fingers by this point.

"You're a demon, what do you know about it?" he said. "It's not that easy. Let's see you try to…"

A change swept over his face – one that usually warned me that the boy was up to something diabolical. I tried to discreetly pry my arm away.

"Bartimaeus, do you value your life?"

"Err…as much as the next fellow." Nat was getting scarier and scarier. He smiled a carnivorous smile that revealed far too much of his teeth.

"I thought so." He pulled the dart away from my flesh and I breathed an involuntary sigh of relief. "I'm willing to forget this ordeal, on one condition. I want you to make this girl fall in love with me."

I stared in utter confusion. In all my years as personal slave to every conceivable madman down through the centuries, I'd never heard such a ridiculous request. I'd had more reasonable commands from masters who'd foamed at the mouth and held lengthy conversations with their left feet.

Then again, insane or not, I preferred to live if I could swing it.

"How do you propose I manage that?" I asked skeptically.

Nathaniel looked annoyed. "Are you a shape-shifter or not? Take my form, and go talk to her."

"And mistaking a demon for you will supposedly make her like you better? Were you dropped on your head as a child? Are you delirious? Come here; let me check your temperature."

"If you must know, I just don't know what to say to her. Every time we speak I seem to make a fool of myself. I admit you have a natural charisma, and in spite of how irritating I personally find you, you may be able to soften her attitude toward me."

"Have I got a choice here?"

"No."

I sighed. "That's what I thought. So who am I trying to beguile, then?"

Nathaniel sat down behind his desk and folded his hands neatly, looking for all the world as though he were striking a business deal.

"Her name is Kathleen Jones. She's a commoner technically, but she's also Makepeace's ward."

"Makepeace again? How many pies does he have his fingers in?"

"All of them, I suspect. He took her in last year after her parents were killed by a renegade afrit. Rumour has it that that's not all he wants from her, if you know what I'm implying. Everyone can see she's not interested, but Makepeace is a dangerous man to have as a rival and I want you to be as discreet as possible."

"Aye, aye sir."

"She's certain to be at the dress rehearsal of Makepeace's play this afternoon, it would be the perfect time to make a move. Here, take this."

He reached down into a drawer in his desk and handed me a long white woman's opera glove. I let it dangle between my thumb and forefinger like something dirty.

"Uh, thanks?" I said, "What _is_ this?"

"That's hers."

"You stole her glove?"

"Never mind that. You can pop in tonight on the pretense of returning it."

"Do you have any idea how creepy that is?"

Nathaniel waved a hand dismissively. "I can't expect you to understand matters of the heart."

"Yes, clearly I could never understand your stalkerish tendencies."

"_Go_."

I turned to comply.

"And Bartimaeus?" the boy called mildly. He was sitting back in his chair with his hands steepled before him like a caricature of some evil mastermind.

"Yes?"

He splayed his fingers over the metal case, caressing it lovingly with his thumb. "If you somehow manage to bungle this up too, I swear it will be the last thing you ever do."

The boy was dead serious. I high-tailed it out of there before he could change his mind and stick me up like a pincushion full of hedgehogs.


	3. Strike Out

CHAPTER THREE: Strike Out

Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is the Property of Jonathan Stroud. Cyrano de Bergerac was written by Edmond Rostand, but technically since it's in the public domain it belongs to all of us. ^^

AN: Anna, Broken Pentacle, Asper, and Nari, thanks for reviewing chapter two! This chapter was once again betaed by the unparalleled Lady Noir. I haven't got much else to say...um...here you go!

* * *

Rehearsal had already started, and the street before the Royal Opera House was empty and quiet. I paced up and down the front steps, trying to summon up enough latent insanity to convince myself to enter.

The air was stiflingly hot, with the sort of sticky breeze that tickled the base of your neck and tricked you into swatting the back of your own head like a lunatic. The situation was not having a positive effect on my nerves.

"What are you looking at?" I yelled at a few bored-looking pigeons perched on the cornice above. Nosy things.

I sighed and collapsed against a fat white column. The smartest thing would be to charge in there and get it over with before I changed my mind. After all, I had no room to back out now. Orders were orders, no matter how ridiculous or poorly thought out.

I stepped out to take up my restless pacing again, and – _thud!_ – abruptly collided with someone hurrying up the steps at break-neck speed. I stumbled back, just managing to grab her arm and save her from taking an unpleasant tumble down the stairs. The hood of her coat was knocked back, and I inhaled sharply at the sight of a familiar face.

"You!" I choked out.

The very same girl from the morning's attack narrowed her eyes and yanked her arm away. I looked her over in astonishment. She was wearing a nondescript, long, black coat and was currently unaccompanied. Apparently Makepeace had yet to find her another babysitter.

"Have we met?" The girl's tone was cool, but her eyes were cautious and assessing. She remembered me, I could tell.

"In a way," I said, playing along, "I had a bit of an altercation with a friend of yours. Kitty, isn't it?"

The girl's expression relaxed subtly and she nodded curtly. "Ah, yes, I remember. Thank you for your interference, earlier."

"Don't mention it," I said glibly. "I mean seriously, don't. My master's still on the warpath about the whole ordeal."

The girl smiled a friendly smile, even as her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "A little odd that we'd run into each other again today, don't you think?"

"Stranger than you know," I replied, thinking of Makepeace's offer. "Well, I'd best be going now. Errands to run and all that. Nice bumping into you, Kitty."

As I turned to leave, I added slyly, "And _do_ try not to commit anymore felonies."

Before I could disappear inside, I found myself spun around and immobilized, with a knife pressed against my throat which had definitely not been there before. The silver blade tickled uncomfortably at my skin.

"What did you just say?" the girl hissed. Her fingers clenched whitely around the handle of the weapon and her eyes were alight with wild alarm.

"Easy!" I said hastily, "Whatever you've been up to is none of my business."

"If you _know_ then I can't afford to let you live," she countered evenly.

"What, you're going to kill me in cold blood? That's a lousy way to repay someone who helped you out."

A deep crease appeared between the girl's brows, and her hand wavered slightly. "Why should I owe you anything?" she scoffed, "You're a demon."

"That doesn't mean my feelings aren't hurt." I pouted dramatically to illustrate.

She studied my face for a long moment, then slowly, reluctantly, pulled the knife away.

"If you breathe a word of this to anyone…"

I placed my hand over my heart. "I'm sworn to silence."

"Don't make me regret this."

She backed away with reluctance – probably longing to turn back and knife me between the ribs. Nevertheless, she slipped through the doors to the opera house without glancing back, leaving my essence more or less intact. Nice of her.

The girl was a member of the Resistance – there was no denying it now. How the young revolutionary had managed to weasel herself into Makepeace's household was beyond me, though to his credit he evidently didn't trust her to waltz around town without a watchful spirit on her tail. I wondered how much he knew.

I shook my head, hoping to clear it. I couldn't afford to be distracted by enigmatic commoners when I had a job to do. Pulling the white glove from my pocket, I slid nimbly into Nat's form. I had a date, and her name was Kathleen Jones.

XXX

_"Tralala, lalalala…"_ From what seemed like every direction, my ears were violently assaulted by the grating trill of the key vocalist's warm-ups bouncing off the walls. Briefly I considered stuffing Mandrake's overly long hair into his ears to dampen the effect.

I ducked behind a column at the back of the theater seating and took a look around to get my bearings. The stage was chaos.

Surrounded by waist-high piles of discarded props, the leads paced around running lines or practicing solos. A man with curlers in his hair chased a boy with a violin through the aisles, while another drew upon his miming skills to pretend to ride a horse across the stage. A poodle in a bellhop suit sat calmly in the wings, waiting for its cue. By all indications, it was the best actor in the show.

A flock of dancers dressed head-to-toe in rainbow coloured feathers frolicked across the stage, vaulting skillfully over scattered props and the backs of the kneeling workmen nailing the set together.

A trapdoor was open centre-stage, with a small, ill-looking choirboy being levered up and down out of it repeatedly. It couldn't have been too clean under the stage, considering how many cobwebs he'd managed to collect in his hair. He must have had allergies, too; his constant sneezing was almost loud enough to drown out the aggravating warble of the lead soprano, who was clearly growing annoyed at his obnoxious medical problems.

Makepeace himself was strutting back and forth through it all like a harried peacock attempting a mating dance.

"More light!" he called, rushing to one end of the stage, "We can't have our actors stepping on each other's toes now. Good heavens, Marissa! Have you a frog in your throat? Go lie down and recover yourself, dear. Quickly, someone bring her some water! And what is this set piece? Come take a look! Does this look sturdy to you? What kind of workmanship are we supporting here? Fix it! And why on this good green Earth hasn't anyone turned up the _lights_?"

I shook my head and held a private moment of silence for the shattered dignity of the stage. My old master Will Shakespeare would have been horrified.

"John! I wouldn't have expected to see you here." Someone came up behind me and slapped me heartily on the back.

"Yeah, gee, nice to see you too. Umm…"

I had no clue who they were.

"Come for a sneak preview of Makepeace's latest play, eh?" The man elbowed me jovially. I was lucky I wasn't actually Nathaniel, because the force of the blow would probably have amputated someone of Nat's meager physical strength. "They say this one's his best yet."

"That…says a lot," I said with a side glance at the spectacle onstage. The other man nodded sagely.

"It does indeed. Listen, I'm glad I bumped into you. I was just speaking with Lugberg about the U.R.I. principals. He seemed to think the logistical target of these new extremist agents belonged to Sandy's department. You filed the report on interdepartmental consistency yesterday, didn't you?"

"Uh…" I had no idea what to say to this guy's gibberish. "Yes?"

"That's exactly what I insisted, but that's not what Spatz told me!"

"Spatz is an idiot," I said knowingly. Statistically speaking, it was probably true.

"I know what you mean," the magician chortled, slapping my shoulder over and over again. "So while I have you here, why don't you tell me which strategy you've decided on?"

"…Strategy?"

"You told me you'd let me know today."

"Yes." I said slowly. "Yes I did. Because I am John Mandrake and therefore well-versed in bureaucratic whatnot. I will therefore give you my opinion. Which is that…I think we should take the…uh…green clockwise approach."

"Oh yes of course, the…_what?_" The magician did a double take. His expression was just as confused as mine.

"You know," I said, waving my hand vaguely, "Uh, revise the synergy of the left-wing lobby group and, uh, start a Machiavellian taskforce to compute the propositional, um…butter…of…llamas." I nodded decisively, in the manner of all great leaders.

The man scratched his chin. "Hmm. Yes, yes, I see now. Brilliant. Thanks, John."

[1. Apparently I had now learned to speak politician. A primitive pseudo-language resembling that of orangutans, which, instead of grunts, contains long, complicated babble that really means things like, 'Welcome to the Congo,' and 'I am the alpha male, where are my bananas?' The public can never tell the difference.]

"No problem," I said. "Now if you don't mind, could you point out Kathleen Jones for me? There's something I need to return to her."

"Oh, haven't you met her yet? That's a shame. Nice girl. I expect she's sitting up in Makepeace's box. Box number five, you know."

I shook his hand amiably and took my leave.

Up the stairs I went, stopping short at the gilded door to Makepeace's box.

This is it, I told myself. The point of no return. With a deep, steadying breath, I reached out and flung open the door.

At the sight of so much crimson velvet, my initial instinct was to flee. It was everywhere: carpeting the floors, draping the walls, padding the plush gold-plated seats. My feet were sinking so far into it that I wondered if I'd ever see them again. It was unhealthy for my mental health, all this fabric.

The Kathleen girl, on the other hand, didn't seem too bothered. Despite the racket I had made on entering, she hadn't even glance my way. She was lounging in one of the crimson seats, her feet propped up on the railing and her curly head bent over a book.

"Can't be bothered to watch the rehearsal, huh?" I said, leaning on the doorframe. [2. I hadn't yet quite summoned the courage to step into the stifling confines of the opera box. Red velvet was bad enough, but I doubted that was the only horror lurking inside. The place had been decorated by Makepeace, after all.]

"You really should. That way, the next fifty times you're forced to watch the production you can fondly remember how the male lead got stuck in his harness and was left dangling from the ceiling for twenty minutes."

The girl turned a page.

_"Do, re, mi, fa, soh!"_ The soprano sang from the stage below.

"Is that book especially engrossing," I asked after a minute, "Or are you giving me the silent treatment? 'Cause I'm starting to feel a bit ignored, to be honest."

The girl snapped the book shut. "Why are you here, Mandrake? I thought I told you to leave me alone."

She turned and gave me a pointed stare, clearly expecting a retort. Unfortunately, I found myself incapable of stringing a sentence together, as every stream of thought in my considerable brain was busy short-circuiting. This girl, Kathleen Jones, was none other than the commoner I had bumped into minutes ago. Kitty. _Kathleen_. Of course – why hadn't I thought of it before?

"I just can't escape you, can I?" I muttered. Too loudly, apparently, for the girl cocked her head and raised an eyebrow.

"Excuse me?" she asked suspiciously.

"Nothing, nothing." I said. I resolved to shrug off my surprise and get down to business. Coincidence or not, It was time to put on my game-face and fulfill the orders I'd been saddled with. I licked a hand and slicked my hair back, Nat-style.

"It's truly a pleasure to see you this fine evening, my lady," I said in my most smarmy voice, "Truly, you look ravishing."

"Thank you. And you look as foppish as ever."

"Oh I like you," I said, settling into the seat next to her. "So you agree that the lace is a bit much?"

"It's the pants that concern me, actually," she replied.

"They really don't leave much to the imagination."

"Exactly."

"And I'm afraid I haven't got the right knees for this sort of exhibitionism."

"They're much too knobby," she agreed.

I was forced to admit it; this girl and I had a lot in common. Anyone who could cuttingly disparage Nat to his face was okay by my books.

"I assure you," I said, "That in spite of my many physical imperfections, I have a sparkling personality."

"Ah yes. You accost lone girls in opera houses who clearly dislike your company – that reflects well on you."

I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender. "My intentions are innocent," I said. "I just came to return something of yours."

I pulled the opera glove out of my coat pocket and dangled it before her.

"Bet you were wondering what happened to this, eh?"

Kitty's hand twitched toward it but she clasped her hands firmly in her lap.

"That's not mine," she said stubbornly.

It had to be. Nat had stolen it from her personally – not that I was about to point that out to her.

"Well, though I'm sure it would go nicely with this ensemble, I know it's not mine. It's got your initials sewn into the hem."

I flipped the glove inside out and displayed the evidence. The girl rubbed her chin and pretended to carefully consider the small black threads.

"Those _are_ your initials," she decided. "King John."

"Oh yes, how could I have forgotten?" I attempted to slide the glove over my hand, but it was way too small and I wound up tangling Nat's long fingers into a painful knot.

"It doesn't seem to fit anymore," I cried in despair, "I suspect I've been eating too many croissants."

Kitty tried to hide it, but the faintest smirk began to cross her face.

"Croissants? How unpatriotic. It'll be nothing but bangers and mash if you don't want the Prime Minister to pass you over next time promotions roll around."

As she spoke, Kitty's eye strayed toward the stage and I followed her gaze. Makepeace had ceased his bustle and was staring directly up at us, looking rather displeased. He waved Kitty toward him with wide gestures, then shot me a most excellent death glare.

"That's my cue," Kitty said, rising. "I'd better go."

"Alright then," I said, "When am I going to see you again?"

"If I'm lucky, then you _won't_."

Ouch. She gathered up her coat and moved to the door as I stared in disbelief. The harsh farewell seemed entirely uncalled for when we had been doing so well.

"Hey, what about your glove?" I called before she disappeared.

"Keep it," she smirked over her shoulder, "Clearly you like it better than I do." She ducked out the door and descended the stairs with a light step, leaving me gaping after her.

"_Mememememe!"_ the soprano warbled.

"Oh shut up." It was spiteful of me, perhaps, to lob one of Nat's shiny dress shoes off the balcony and knock the fruit-covered headdress from the actress's head. But let's be fair to my irate state of mind; Kitty Jones was a very aggravating girl.


	4. Rosebuds

Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is the Property of Jonathan Stroud. Cyrano de Bergerac was written by Edmond Rostand, but technically since it's in the public domain it belongs to all of us. ^^

A/N: Hey everyone – sorry about the delay. Did I mention I have to work twelve hour shifts at my summer job? :( Profuse thanks to everybody who reviewed last chapter: Nari-nick, Broken Pentacle, Random Inspired, Athenias, and Blue Painted Freak. And of course many thanks to the almighty Lady Noir for her beta skills. Also, awesome news! This fic now has fanart thanks to Nari, which you can view at rhysenne (DOT) deviantart (DOT) com (SLASH) # (SLASH) d2qheel. (Or just follow the link on my profile) If you've never seen her work, go take a peek, she's mind-bogglingly talented!

* * *

"Well?"

I stood alert in the pentacle before my master's desk, ready to report. Pale morning light filtered in through a crack in the blinds, casting a half-moon reflection on the polished floor.

Nathaniel, it seemed, had been up through the night. A mysterious stain adorned the left sleeve of his suit jacket, his hair was mussed and not looking its cleanest, and his pale face was displaying the purple circles under his eyes to admirable effect.

I scratched the side of my head. "Well…I don't know how you managed it, but she seems pretty determined to dislike you."

"I've said nothing untoward," the boy insisted. "Surely you've misread the situation."

"She called your knees knobby."

Nathaniel pinched the bridge of his nose and gave a world-weary sigh that was downright disconcerting coming from someone of his young age.

"I didn't say there's no hope," I assured him, "But it's going to take some time."

"Good," he said, piling a stack of envelopes into his briefcase. "Dial down some of that impudence and irascibility and I'm sure you'll prevail eventually."

"I think she likes the impudence."

Nat paused in order to roll his eyes. "As you will," he said, "I'm afraid I haven't got time to advise you right now. Thanks to your antics yesterday, I have to be at the ministry by ten for a damage-control meeting. We're looking for immediate solutions to the leaked-weapon situation."

"Ah yes, very important. You sure are one of the big-shots now."

Nat ignored my jibe and snapped his briefcase shut. "Have the others assist you if you require anything. I expect you to report some concrete progress in the next few days."

"No need to be so emotional about it, you helpless romantic." Honestly, how Nat could act as detached as the retina of an eighty-year-old myopic drag racer while discussing his love life was beyond me.

"You are free to carry out your charge as you see fit, but don't get into trouble. Come find me at Whitehall tonight once you've finished your duties. _Discreetly_, this time," he said pointedly, and promptly bustled from the room.

I waited until the rumble of his departing limousine faded away before stepping from my pentacle.

_As I saw fit_, eh? This was certainly going to be an interesting day.

My first executive decision was to rope my compatriots into things.

"Guys?" I called, wandering from the study to the kitchen and back. The house was strangely silent, which in this business is often a bad sign. Stoggles was especially liable to make a noticeable racket, and his absence had me wondering if he'd been gobbled by a stealthy afrit. I searched the attic, the guest rooms, and the chimney, all without any luck.

When I finally located my fellow slaves in the basement, I found them in quite the predicament. Stoggles was clinging desperately to a dangling light fixture, caterwauling like a bobcat with its whiskers on fire. His tail swatted back and forth through a hazy cloud of tiny hovering mites that dove to sting at his face, while tiny cracks appeared in the ceiling as the lamp swung dangerously. Everything in the room was scattered, upended, torn apart, or in some extreme cases, totally incinerated. Queezle, meanwhile, as an orange orangutan, was wading through a dancing, surging tide on the ground, attempting and failing to swipe up the little creatures into an empty milk bottle.

"For Pete's sake, close the door!" She yelled as I sauntered in.

"Hey guys," I said, brushing a pair of dueling Bermuda Fire-Mites from the counter and hopping up to sit cross-legged on its slightly charred surface. "I need some help."

"'_eeeeeelp!_" Stoggles echoed, spinning in violent circles above.

"Grab a bottle and get to work," Queezle ordered me, making great sweeping passes with her milk bottle and utterly failing to capture even one of the little beasts.

"Let me guess, Nat told you to clean this room out, and Stoggles knocked one of the mite-jars off the shelf."

"He knocked the _whole shelf_ over, the little bungler," Queezle growled.

"Well never mind that now," I said, "I need to make some girl fall in love with Mandrake, and I have no idea how to write a love letter."

I displayed a sheet of embossed letterhead that I had nicked from Nat's study. A rogue mouler dropped down from the ceiling and started to nibble a corner.

"We're a little busy here!" Queezle grumbled, chasing after a six-legged creature that was running around the perimeter of the room, waving a pair of scissors over its head.

I crushed the paper-eating spirit with my thumb, leaving a greenish smear across the page which I wasn't sure was all that romantic.

"Aw, they're chewin' on me pretty face," Stoggles moaned.

The scissor-wielding mite hopped up the wall and impudently stuck its tongue out at Queezle. The orangutan bellowed in frustration and smashed the bottle against the floor. "I'll stomp you all to death!" she cried out, charging.

There was only one thing to do in this sad situation. I reached up and pried Stoggles from the ceiling lamp by the scruff of his scaly neck. The swarm of airborne mites buzzed around him like killer bees. I waved him tantalizingly over the mites blanketing the floor, who leapt and whirled in anticipation.

"Oi, whatcha doin'?" Stoggles cried out fearfully.

"Just make sure you fly out the overflow drain," I told him as the slavering bugs began to follow us across the room.

"The wot?"

Suddenly, I slung him through the air and hammered his malleable form down the drain of the stainless steel sink in the corner.

"_Arghh!_" he protested.

The whirr of a thousand wing casings was like a roaring waterfall. As one great flashing, sulfurous cloud, the mites cascaded down the drain after their succulent prize. I shifted into position as the last beetle-like creature flitted out of sight.

"Now Stoggles!" I called. The poor dazed imp drifted out the overflow opening as a dense indigo cloud. [1. All of Stoggles' forms were dense, for obvious reasons.] I quickly switched on the faucet.

Water gushed into the sink, boiling and churning as it spiraled down the drain. Noxious fumes spewed up, sputtering and crackling, and a hideous squeal rose up and fell silent. Bubbles of filth gurgled from the drain and popped slowly, one after the other.

I sighed in relief as peace returned to the smoldering rubble that was once a nicely furnished room.

"Ughh, I _hate_ mites," Queezle said, wiping bits of ash from her belly fur.

Stoggles wandered around in a dizzy circle and collapsed on his head, moaning piteously. He yelped as an irritated Queezle flicked him sharply with her tail.

"Cheer up bucko," I told him, "At least there weren't any Amazonian Piranha Mites in the mix."

The imp shivered and covered his eyes with his feet. I patted him on the shoulder, then turned to survey my topsy-turvy surroundings which interestingly enough, seemed to defy the very laws of physics. The green paisley couch had been impaled with an ironing board, the concrete floor was rumpled and swollen, and the wall above the sink was spattered with green mite-slime that was slowly eating a hole in the drywall. The Other Place itself would be jealous of such chaos.

"I'm sure Mandrake will love your redecorating," I told my companions, "But just in case it isn't quite to his taste, you might want to get on his good side by helping me out with something."

"With what?" Queezle was suspicious. She wasn't the sort of sucker who let other spirits pawn their work off on her.

"Ahem. As I previously mentioned, our esteemed master charged me with getting this girl to fall for him. Problem is, she's not interested."

I brandished my battered paper. "So I'm going to write her a love letter that will surely win her heart."

"Nice," said Stoggles.

"My powers of eloquence," I continued, "Are of course unmatched, but I'm a bit stumped at the moment, unfortunately. So how 'bout it guys? What do you think dear Mandrake should say to woo his sweetie?" I poised my pen over the paper and looked up expectantly. Stoggles stroked his chin.

"Whatcha got so far?" he asked.

I cleared my throat and read dramatically. "Dear Kitty…"

Stoggles and Queezle leaned forward in anticipation.

I rubbed Ptolemy's hair nervously. "…That's all I've got."

They slumped.

"What?" I said, "I'm no expert here."

"Say something poetic," Queezle suggested. "All humans like that stuff."

Stoggles nodded enthusiastically. "Tell 'er: _Yer rear nasal flaps er as lovely as the multicoloured stink-cloud plumes from a Stygian Imp's backside._ That's what I always tells the missus." Stoggles placed a spiky hand over his heart and made doe-eyes at the ceiling while Queezle and I just stared.

"The _missus_?" I said, "Actually no, don't tell me. I don't want to know. I think I'll just tell Kitty that Mandrake likes her very much and…uh…"

Queezle wrinkled her nose. "I think you're supposed to say something about rosebuds in there. Like: _Your eternal beauty is as winsome as the dewy petal of the rosebud._"

"Uh…I don't think Kitty's much for the archaic stuff."

The orangutan crossed her arms petulantly. "Do you want our help or not?"

"Fine, fine." I scribbled it down.

"An tell 'er she makes yer 'eart pump like water through a fire hose. Only one with a hole innit, geddit? 'Cause you gots an arrow through yer 'eart, an now there's a hole!"

"Why do I even talk to you guys?"

"Bartimaeus!"

"A hole, got it."

"With _rosebuds_."

"Rosebuds it is."

Fifteen minutes, and we had come up with the most hideous love letter in all of creation. I winced and signed Nat's name to the bottom. [2. No, not his _birth_ name. Don't be thick.] I was just grateful that it wasn't me who would ultimately be taking credit for this dreadful abomination.

Poor Kitty. I could only hope that her brain wouldn't leak out of her ears when she read it.

XXX

"Knock, knock…"

I popped into Makepeace's office in Whitehall in the sharp blue uniform of a telegram boy. It was a nice guise if ever I saw one. My shoes glowed as though from hours of polishing, each of the brass buttons on my jacket gleamed brightly enough to bore holes into one's eyeballs, and a cap sat at a jaunty angle atop Ptolemy's carefully arranged hair. But sadly this effort was all lost on Kitty, who shrieked and tipped head-over-heels from her chair, dragging along the desk drawer she'd been rooting through and spewing its contents all over the room. I gingerly sidestepped the gigantic stapler that hurdled my way.

"Geez, calm down," I said with a smirk, "It's almost like you've got something to hide."

"You!"

Kitty leapt to her feet and hurriedly dusted herself off, eyeing me suspiciously all the way.

"Don't look at me like that," I told her, "If you want to go looking through Makepeace's private documents, I'm all for it."

She shook her head with a roll of her eyes and sat back down in the chair. "What on Earth are you doing here?" She said. "If you try to tell me you just happened by again I'm going to strangle you."

"Good luck with that. I have a very resilient windpipe. It's nothing to get uptight about. John Mandrake, my master, sent me to deliver something to you."

"_Mandrake!_" Kitty shot up out of her chair and glared at me. I held up my hands in a pacifying gesture.

"Kitty, sit down, it's fine. I didn't tell him anything about your extracurricular activities if that's what you're afraid of."

The girl ran a hand through her hair, looking conflicted, then after a moment resumed stuffing Makepeace's papers into her backpack.

"How did you even know I was in here?" she asked.

"I've got an imp pal who knows how to scry," I said. [3. Admittedly, Stoggles was less _"pal"_ and more _"burdensome albatross around my neck", _and his ability was not so much _"scrying"_ as it was _"squinting blearily into the astral plane and making a couple of loose guesses."_ Still, it came in handy occasionally.]

Kitty placed her hands on her hips. "Are you saying someone could be watching us right now?"

"_Psh_, of course not!" I said indignantly, "If some mangy scrying imp was poking around in here right now, I think I'd notice. All I'm saying is that you might want to make sure you're _really _alone before you ransack the place for government secrets."

Kitty leaned back in the chair. "Can't I block it or something?"

I grinned. "Not without a slave of your own…or at least one of _these_." The chain of a small gold locket was poking out from the jumble of papers Kitty had knocked to the floor when I entered, and I bent now to scoop it up. Its weird, inverted aura had been calling out for my attention for the past couple of minutes. I held it out to Kitty, letting it dangle from my index finger.

"I'm not sure if it's an Amulet of Shrouding or Obfuscation, but either way it ought to protect you from prying eyes while you go around doing your thing."

Kitty slipped it around her neck, somehow making a truly hideous piece of Babylonian jewelry look good. "Well, thank you," she said to me, "Though I imagine your master won't be pleased if he finds out you helped a spy evade the magicians."

"Who, _Mandrake_? Naw, he's no more loyal to the government than you or I."

"That little weasel is all about increasing the magician's control," Kitty said. "I've watched him backstab his way up the ranks. He's the most power hungry of the whole lot."

Her dark eyes smoldered, and I was forced to admit that the girl was indeed very beautiful. Smart too. It wasn't hard to understand what Nat saw in her. [4. And you had to hand it to Nat; he had taste. Most magicians aimed for a vapid, cosmetic-caked blonde who could hang off their arm and giggle on command. I was fairly confident that Kitty would viciously maim anyone who even tried to insinuate that she might possibly know how to giggle.]

"That's not the tune he's singing now," I said. "Maybe that's why he likes you so much. Here, he told me to give you this." I held out the letter, neatly folded. I watched in nervous anticipation as her eyes skimmed over the page. With both Stoggles and Queezle donating lines, the whole thing had turned out rather…uneven.

"_Dear Kitty_," the girl read aloud, "_Your eternal beauty is as winsome as the dewy petal of the rosebud. My heart gushes with love for you like water through a fire hose. A pink satin fire hose bedecked with rosebuds from the bosom of summer. I can't live without you, my rosebud, seeing as you stole my heart and several other vital organs too. I wouldn't mind getting my spleen back if it isn't too much trouble. Dearest darling, say you will give me your sweet rosy hand. Looking at you is like devouring a six-course dinner of Swiss chocolate stink-mites. And rosebuds. Say you feel the same. Love, John."_

Kitty fell silent, one dark eyebrow lifting eloquently in response.

"I think he's got split personalities," I said by way of explanation.

Kitty carefully laid the letter on the desk. Her lips twitched upward. "Would you believe this is only the second-oddest thing I've seen today?" she asked. "You know…It's so silly that it's almost charming."

"Er…that's certainly a unique attitude toward serious mental illness."

She smirked. "I don't think he's being _serious_."

Yeah, let's roll with that. "Probably not," I agreed. "Want me to take a reply back to him?"

I waited as Kitty absently ran her nails along a gore in the wooden desk. She bit her lip. "You don't have any reason to be loyal to him," she said out of the blue, rolling the locket between her fingers.

"Not really," I agreed.

"And in your perfect impartiality, you're assuring me that despite all appearances, Mandrake supports the commoner's cause?"

"Why don't you ask _him _about it?"

She cradled her head in her hands. "It's so risky…but a potential contact on the inside? I can't let an opportunity like that slide, can I?"

"No," I answered, "No you can't."

XXX

"…And thus Devereaux is advocating a preemptive strike against the resistance in the next month or so. Members of our special unit have infiltrated the group and…"

Whitwell was blabbering on self-importantly about tactics. Officially, I was supposed to be taking notes on the meeting, but instead was preoccupied with playing hangman against myself on the back of my notepad. [5. Incidentally, I was also losing terribly – a quirk that came with being able to think on multiple conscious lines of thought. It didn't help that I was including characters from the Mayan, Arabic, Chinese, Sumerian, Greek, and Latin scripts. The page was beginning to look like the Rosetta stone on steroids.]

Nathaniel cleared his throat and gestured pointedly.

With a sigh, I scribbled out the half-drawn hanging figure (who bore a suspicious resemblance to my master) and returned to jotting down the dull spewings from Whitwell's mouth.

"…In the meantime, we have our best researchers working on an antidote for weapon X4, though we must be prepared for a worst case scenario fight against armed resistance members. Mandrake will be heading the alchemical research team, while Cutter and I shall be working out a ritual-based cure in order to…"

If I was capable of sleeping, I'd have drifted off long ago. In these situations, distraction was a form of self-preservation that kept my restless brain from churning itself into butter.

"THE TARGET IS MAKING PROGRESS." I scrawled on a blank sheet for notepaper, and waved it under Nat's nose. The magician raised an eyebrow in silent inquiry.

"SHE FINDS YOUR APAULLING, NIGH-INSANE TURN OF PHRASE 'ALMOST CHARMING.'" I clarified.

"My _what_?" Nathaniel whispered in distress.

The rest of the meeting was much more amusing. By the time we left, Nat's hair was in total disarray and his nervous fingers had shredded a total of sixteen agenda sheets into a tiny mountain of shaved paper on the table in front of him. The alligator-faced woman on his right subtly edged her chair away.

"Tell me exactly what happened." He snapped the minute the two of us were free of the conference room. I had to jog to keep up with his long, angry stride.

"Nothing to get excited about," I admitted, "She just– _oh no_."

"Bartimaeus, so help me I'll…" Nat looked like his aorta was going to burst, but I just pointed wordlessly ahead. Hurrying up the hallway toward us was Kitty Jones herself. She must have finished ransacking Makepeace's desk and come to look for my master.

"Quick," I whispered, "She can't see us like this!" Nat flew off his feet as I yanked him round the corner, ignoring Kitty's called greeting. There was a door to one side, a janitor's closet, and I roughly stuffed Nat inside.

By the time Kitty rounded the corner, a fair facsimile of John Mandrake was leaning casually against the closet door.

"Kitty," I called out in the friendly voice of a man who _hadn't_ just been dragged from her presence by a panicking djinni. "What a surprise."

Kitty gave me an odd look, but refrained from commenting on Mandrake's strange behaviour. I think by this point she was probably coming to expect it of him.

"I've been looking for you," she said, waving the letter.

"Ah, yes," I said, "Come to thank me for my gift of fine poetry?"

"If this is your idea of a letter, I'd love to see how you fill out your tax papers."

"Yup, _total yearly income: 100,000 rosebuds_."

I smiled at her and she smiled back, snickering a little.

"The demon of yours who delivered this–"

"Bartimaeus? Yes, an excellent servant that one. Resourceful, intelligent, good-looking, well-spoken…I really don't deserve him – everyone knows it."

"Well, he certainly turns up at the strangest times. He said a few things that caught my interest…"

The words were light, but something had changed behind Kitty's eyes. She leaned in close to speak softly into my ear and I was assailed by the spicy scent of her hair.

"John, I think you and I have something very important to discuss…" The hallway was empty and quiet; even her whispers echoed hollowly against the bare walls.

My breath caught. "Like what?" I whispered in reply.

"We'd better not talk of it here. Come and see me tomorrow, alright?"

"Alright."

She tilted her head and studied me with interest. "Well, I'll see you then."

Even after she left I remained slumped back against the wall, heart thumping in my chest. Had I just managed to get Nat inducted into the resistance? It hadn't exactly been my original intension, but the curiosity was overwhelming. The mysterious rebel group had been growing more and more active each year, and yet no one seemed to know much about their numbers or organization. It was entirely possible that the fall of the British Empire would come far sooner that I had thought, and if it did I wanted a front-row seat.

A muffled but insistent thumping roused me from my thoughts and I stood aside to let the door swing open. Nat tumbled out of the closet, a bucket crowning his head and a mop head wound viciously around his feet.

He lifted his chin from the floor and glared at me.

"So Nat," I said, kneeling down to his level, "What was Whitwell saying about striking at the resistance again?"


	5. Meeting of Minds

Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is the Property of Jonathan Stroud. Cyrano de Bergerac was written by Edmond Rostand, but technically since it's in the public domain it belongs to all of us. ^^

A/N: Hey guys, sorry for the delay! (I always say that don't I?) I hope you haven't gotten bored and wandered off yet! Thank you BluePaintedFreak, TheBrokenPentacle, Moss, Bibby, megarock1018, Me, Lisette, Anne Gable, and beautyfrompain for reviewing – it means a lot to me! Anyone else who's reading, don't be shy! I want to know what you think. :) As usual, this chapter was betaed by the lovely Lady Noir aka A Evans. And here you go:

* * *

I, Bartimaeus, terror of Babylon, slayer of legions, jewel of the Fertile Crescent, dread of the ancients, and all around general scourge of human history, had worked myself into a pitiful fit of nerves. Hands that had raised the columns of the Parthenon were now so clammy with sweat that after knocking on Kitty's door, they left a residual wet splotch that to my feverish mind vaguely resembled Edvard Much's _The Scream_. My vision was blurring into an opaque smear, and my knees would have been knocking like a metronome if I hadn't given them a very stern talking-to before venturing forth.

Why was I so nervous? Because I had decided to do something Risky with a capital R. Namely, to hand yesterday's secret government documents over to the resistance. It was treason, pure and simple. And let's face it; I'm really not your hard-core insurgent type of spirit. Oh sure, I love to complain and occasionally gave my masters a run for their money, but I've always gone for a lazy, fine-but-I'm-going-to-do-a-shoddy-job-_so_-_there_ mentality towards protesting my enslavement than anything resembling _real_ opposition. That sort of thing got you killed.

Nat's files were a lead weight in my hands. I'd never intended to get this far over my head. But that girl…she had a way of changing people. Inspiring them. It was crazy – I hardly knew anything about her or her plans. Perhaps it was the fire in her eyes, or the confidence she used to play the magicians around her like dolls on strings. Either way, for the first time in a thousand years I let myself believe that maybe my actions could make a difference. Maybe this odd alliance could actually work. Maybe this time, the Empire might fall for good.

Maybe, just maybe.

I steeled myself to knock again. To my surprise, the door was yanked open without warning, leaving my fist hanging uncertainly in the air like a limp haddock drying in the breeze.

"Quick, get inside before someone sees you," Kitty whispered urgently.

"Wha–" Not being a particularly patient girl, she caught hold of Nathaniel's frilly cravat and dragged me inside.

"The neighbors," she explained quietly, "Are all Makepeace's informants. I told him I was too ill to go with him to the play tonight, and when he gets back I don't want him to hear I've been entertaining male visitors. If he discovered you here, he'd strangle you with your own small intestine."

"Lovely."

"Though he'd be very polite about it of course. Come on, this way."

She led me upstairs to a bedroom that was likely her own. It was a plain room, free of the usual opulence that saturated Makepeace's home like a colourful bruise – this place looked hardly lived in at all. No papers littered the spotless desk, not a single poster or painting graced the walls, but still a few telltale signs of life stood out to my practiced eyes. The foremost being the familiar black jacket that lay crumpled under a chair.

"I guess you want to know why I asked you to come here," said Kitty, plopping down on the bed. She gestured for me to sit beside her.

"Why guess? You were charmed by my stunning good looks and witty repartee of course."

"Hah, no."

"Few can resist their power," I said, slinging an arm around her shoulders. She shook her head in exasperation, but let it stay.

"No, no," she said, "I asked you to come because I'm _curious_."

I puffed out my chest. "Of course you are. I'm a man of mystery."

Kitty rolled her eyes. "What you are is touched in the head. But yes, I'm curious. Because you, my friend, are different."

"Me?" I tried to look innocent.

Kitty's eyes narrowed. "I can see it," she said, "They all think you're one of them, but I know better. I've noticed some…let's call them discrepancies. I've seen what you truly are."

I froze in shock, terror battering my ribcage. Impossible, how could she have seen through my guise? And most importantly, what was she planning? Did she have silver on her? I prepared to shoot myself through the windowpane and escape while I still could.

"You're a dissenter," she continued before I had a chance to break anything in my panic. "Oh, don't look so shocked, it was easy to figure out. There's your servant for one thing. He discovered something about me. I don't know if he told you about it or not, but since neither of you have tried to stop me…"

She was referring to her theft of the ministry's djinn-killing weapon. I relaxed slightly, relieved that she hadn't realized I was an imposter. I liked talking to her, and the thought of the masquerade ending sent a sharp pang through my chest. If someone had ever suggested I'd ever miss a human's company, [1. And no one had. No one's _that_ delusional.] I'd probably have devoured them without batting so much as an eyelash. But I couldn't now deny the strange truth.

"He didn't," I said, "But it was easy enough to figure out on my own."

"There you go. You've known all along, and you still let me be. You're not like other politicians."

"No, I suppose I'm not," I said with a tinge of irony.

"At first I thought you were another power-grubbing sycophant, no offense."

"None taken."

"But the instant we met at the theater I changed my mind. You don't act like one of them at all. The rest of them are all so…cold. Fake." She grinned sheepishly. "Makepeace hates you, you know. He practically accused you of leading the Resistance singlehanded. And none of that even covers the enlightening chats I've had with your servant. He actually gave me a few tips on espionage." She smirked. "From there it was easy to figure out that you let me steal Weapon X4 on purpose."

_"What?"_

"Yes," she waved a hand dismissively at my gaping expression, "I'm not stupid you know. I know full well that two capable djinn would never back down against a skirmish with commoners unless they were deliberately trying to lose. Or unless they were totally incompetent of course."

"Those are hardly the _only_ two options!" I protested indignantly. "Perhaps one of them, though fantastically accomplished, was hampered by the presence of his two bumbling companions."

"Stop trying to deny it, I know what you did." Her solemn eyes caught mine, liquid brown, and immediately I sobered. "You have nothing to fear from me, I promise."

"I…" what was there to say? "Thank you."

Kitty's brow furrowed. "That must have been an extraordinarily dangerous situation for you. The ministry placed the blame on your shoulders, didn't it?"

I waved her off. "I've been a scapegoat before. No big deal."

"Yes it is!" she insisted, "They're like piranhas up in parliament. You'd better watch your back before someone sticks a knife in it."

She was completely serious, but I wasn't all that alarmed by the image of Nat's potential murder. Maybe I ought to leave some breakfast tea and steak knives out on the sideboard after dark to aid our would-be assassins. It pays to be hospitable after all.

"You're being pretty up front with me Kitty," I said musingly, "I hope you don't go confessing treason to every Joe Shmoe that comes along."

"Oh, I don't," she laughed, "This is different. We're the same. Two misfits pretending to lead a luxurious lifestyle they don't believe in, all the while hoping to bring down the system from the inside."

"Well that's going a bit far," I said, "I might not agree with the government, but that doesn't mean I'm a secret double agent."

She grinned a chilling grin. "Oh, yes you are. You just don't know it yet."

Well, if she said so, who was I to argue? Speaking of which…I took the opening to unburden myself of the heavy file under my arm.

"I suppose you're right in a way," I told her, "And to tell you the truth, that's why I came here today. To give you this."

Kitty's face lit up at the thick stack of paper. "What is it?"

"Everything you need for your little schemes to work. I hope. Anarchy is a bit unpredictable, you know."

She seized the folder with interest, flipping it open and devouring the contents with her eyes. Her face seemed to come alive all of a sudden: her eyes danced, her teeth tugged at her lower lip. I couldn't look away.

"This is…this is amazing," She looked up at me, eyes shining. "This is…I can't believe it. Every little detail of their plans!" she paused and took a deep breath.

"Thank you." She grasped my hand, and I was completely unbalanced. Her skin warmed my palm, and I bit down the urge to run my thumb over her smooth fingers. "I think I misjudged you when we first met, John. I owe you an apology."

"I don't want an apology," I said quietly.

"No? Would you rather have–"

A resounding slam of a door downstairs interrupted her. Kitty and I exchanged panicked glances.

"Makepeace," Kitty whispered. "Hide! Go!"

If I was found here, Nat would roast me. I heard each step of the stairs groan and cry out under Makepeace's massive weight. I marveled at his speed – incredible for a man of his highly unsatisfactory age and build. I rolled under the bed just as the playwright swept dramatically into the room, filling it instantly with his cloying, flowery scent.

"Kitty my dear," he said in his rich tone, "I do hope you're feeling better?"

Kitty fell into a spectacular coughing fit, then spoke in a mournful, wavering tone. "Not at all, Quentin. I'm afraid it's turning into pneumonia. I ought to sleep awhile I think."

"Oh you poor thing," the magician said cheerfully, sitting down in the chair by her bed. "And you missed out on such an event, too! There was a terrible scene with the Finance Minister and we had to close the performance early."

"Oh how tragic." Kitty said.

"Well, perhaps it was a small blessing, my dear. Now I shall be able to tend you in your moment of weakness!"

At this, Kitty once again gave a hoarse cough.

"No, no, that's not necessary," she croaked, "All I need is some rest. Tell me about the play. Did everyone attend?"

"Of course." Makepeace preened like the peacock he was. "The Prime Minister and his wife attended, obviously. Henry is in France you know, but all of the other Ministers were there with their apprentices." He paused. "Well…except for Mandrake, unfortunately. That young man is rapidly making himself our enemy, my dear."

I heard Kitty flinch.

"Now, you needn't look so worried my angel! I have the boy well in hand. He shan't be bothering us much longer."

"Oh and why is that?" Kitty sounded wary.

"I've arranged to have him deployed. There's some silly business, a hint of civil unrest right now. Nothing you need worry yourself about. Dear Rupert has it in his head to send his ministers out to fight, can you imagine?" He gave a tittering laugh. "Too many magicians already overseas, you see. Anyway, I'm arranging to have Mandrake sent out with the first contingent. Hopefully, he won't be coming back. Are you alright my dear? You look quite pale!"

"I…are you sure that's how you want to deal with him?"

I shared Kitty's agitation. Nat fighting in the streets would have been an amusing image, except that if he was conscripted, then I would be too. Fighting against Kitty Jones and weapon X4.

"Of course I'm certain!" Makepeace spluttered, "The boy's caused me nothing but trouble! First he lost the X4, then he set his djinni upon ours, and next thing I know he's been bothering you with his attentions! He refuses to be bribed and openly scorns my plays…"

"You poor thing," Kitty said. "I agree he ought to be punished. But you're doing it the wrong way."

"I beg your pardon?"

"For an ambitious man like Mandrake, a chance to prove himself in battle and gain fame and status wouldn't be a punishment at all. You'd be playing right into his hands. Instead, you ought to convince Devereaux to keep Mandrake here and send others to gain the glory. He'll go mad with envy."

I could hear the slimy smirk in Makepeace's voice. "Why my dear Kitty, you conniving little vixen! You're completely right of course. Just wait until I tell Mandrake he'll have to sit at home and mind the ledgers."

Makepeace was right. She _was_ a conniving little vixen. Bravo.

"If you want to really torture him, tell him how you'll be going in his stead."

Makepeace choked. "I? But my dear, I didn't intend…"

"What could be more demeaning than his greatest enemy usurping his place? Think of his humiliation!"

"Yes but, well…I'd thought to remain here with you."

There was the sound of Kitty rising from the bed. Her bare feet rested by my hand.

"What is there to gain by staying here?" she demanded, "You'd only prove yourself a coward and lower yourself in my estimation. Prove yourself a man. If you were a war hero, then perhaps we could finally be together."

"My dear, are you saying…but you always told me…could you mean…that perhaps you and I…?"

"Perhaps, I mean, I'm not certain. Prove yourself to me in this war and we shall see."

I was in the midst of admiring Kitty's maneuvering, when I had a sudden silent panic attack. I had totally forgotten about Kitty's folder of treasonous secrets. It lay now on the floor by the bed, pinned to the floor by the heel of Makepeace's strange purple boot. I tried not to slap my forehead in despair.

I couldn't let Makepeace notice that file. Not only would _my _charade be up, but Kitty herself would be incriminated. She'd be lucky if she got a life sentence – more likely she'd be tortured for information and publicly executed. I took a steadying breath, reached out, and pinched one corner of the folder.

"My dear…I had no idea you felt as I did. How could I? You were always so cold!"

Reassured that he hadn't noticed, I pulled gently, sliding the folder across the floor towards me. It had almost cleared his foot entirely when Makepeace suddenly shifted his weight, grinding his heel into the papers. I tugged and tugged again. They didn't budge. Giving up on subtly, I gave an enormous yank. Makepeace's foot went flying and the papers tumbled into my hands.

The conversation halted abruptly.

"Have you something under your bed, dear?" Makepeace asked in a deceptively casual tone.

"N-no," Kitty said, but the magician was already getting to his knees.

I lay perfectly still as Makepeace's round face slid down into my field of vision. He stared straight into my eyes, silent. My heart pounded. His brow wrinkled, his eyes darted to the stack of papers and back again. His violent daffodil smell choked my nostrils and I held back a sneeze. At last he lumbered to his feet.

"I ought to have the maids vacuum in here, the dust is dreadful," he said, "Well, I'd best make that call to Devereaux. I'll see you at dinner, my dear."

I let out a breath as the door closed, transforming myself back into Nathaniel and releasing the Charm I'd placed over the documents. The large dust-bunny at my side became a thick folder once again, and I crawled out, black suit peppered with pale dust.

"My god, I can't believe he didn't see you," Kitty whispered, white in the face.

"I'd better climb out the window," I said. Kitty nodded.

"There's a small park down the street," she said, "Wait for me there, okay? It'll only be a minute or two before I can sneak out after you."

And so I found myself strolling through a willow-lined walk after dark, discussing the ins-and-outs of history with Kitty listening raptly at my side.

Ahead, the wavering moon floated atop the starry surface of a perfectly round fishpond. Quiet, empty, with only the girl at my side for company, I could almost learn to like this planet.

"You lot are a lot better organized than I thought," I told her, "Devereaux's lot are severely underestimating you."

"You think we have a chance, then?" Kitty asked.

"Oh, more than a chance. The government will fall; it's a sure thing. These autocracies never last. You can only cow a population with fireworks and magic tricks for so long before they start lighting their torches. And once parliament goes up in smoke…" I fell still, caught in the way Kitty looked up at me, in the small absent smile on her lips.

"What?" she prodded at my silence.

"Oh, nothing," I said, and continued where I'd left off. But a strange feeling had come over me. It had to do with Kitty's solemn eyes and thoughtful interjections. With the honest consideration she gave to what I was saying, with the warm weight of her attention. No one had ever listened so seriously to me before, and I was only just now realizing how much I actually had to say.

"Of course, the sad truth is that the minute you manage to crush this empire, another will spring up in its place. The British Empire replaced the Czech empire, the Czech Empire replaced the Byzantine Empire, the Byzantine Empire replaced the Carolingian Empire, and so on until the dawn of history. I can't say you've got my hopes up too much."

"It won't be like that this time," Kitty said, looking out over the water.

"No? And who's going to stop the Americans or French or whoever from marching in while you commoners are busy chasing magicians around with pitchforks? How are you going to defend yourselves against armies of djinn?"

"There's no way fighting a foreign invader could be harder than fighting your own government. As for the djinn, they don't seem particularly loyal to the magicians. Even your Bartimaeus doesn't like you very much. I bet at least _some_ of them could be persuaded over to our side."

"Evidence suggests that might not be entirely impossible," I muttered under my breath. Kitty raised an eyebrow.

"Well at any rate," I said, "You've got a lot going in your favour. You have weapons, two spies, a respectable level of resilience, decent recruitment, and a load of that horrible djinn-killer stuff. If you can't pull off a right good rebellion with all that then you aren't worth your salt in rabble-rousing."

"Oh, I'm worth my salt."

"I wouldn't dare disagree."

Kitty smiled and tapped her chin thoughtfully. "You know, you're a lot smarter than you look," she told me.

"I imagine that isn't difficult," I replied honestly, ruffling Nat's woeful hair.

Kitty's fingers wrapped gently around mine, and I held my breath.

"Sooo…" she said with false casualness, blowing a loose curl out of her eyes, "Want to go out for dinner sometime?"

XXX

I burst through the kitchen shutters, whistling the brightest human tune I knew. [2. Which happened to be a little diddy written by the cult of Dionysus – a favourite during Bacchanalia.]

"Good evening," I called jovially to my fellow spirits, who were busy washing up the dinner dishes.

"Someone's happy today," Queezle said wryly.

I picked a rose out of the vase on the counter and offered it to her gallantly. "I am indeed happy, strange as the idea must seem."

"Oi, what's 'appened to _you_?" Stoggles said, scratching his jutting nose. I patted his spiky head fondly.

"Oh nothing, my little blue friend. I've just have a very, very good day."

I danced out of the room into the living room, humming out loud, then stopped short. Nathaniel was reading in an armchair, cocooned in a red silk dressing gown.

"Bartimaeus," he said in surprise. "You're back late. You have some good news for me, I hope." Before I could respond he scowled. "And change your form, will you? I don't like talking to my doppelganger."

I let myself melt into Ptolemy's familiar form and hopped up to sit on the lid of the grand piano.

"I do have good news," I said gleefully, my mood too good to muster enough ire to snark at him properly. "Kitty has asked me out."

Nathaniel's book snapped shut. "She did? That's excellent news! I was beginning to think you had no idea what you were doing."

"Uh, I didn't. I'm a djinni, not Don Juan you know."

Nathaniel sniffed. "I'll keep that in mind. Still, I have to admit you've done well. Far better than expected, in fact. You have my gratitude."

My eyes grew comically wide. "Are you _thanking_ me?"

"I suppose a reward would not be uncalled for. If you wish, I will release you from my service for the next three days and you may return to the Other Place."

I could hardly believe what Nat was saying. It was even harder to believe what I said next.

"I can't."

Nathaniel's mouth dropped open. "Pardon me?"

"I can't go home. Dinner with Kitty is tomorrow."

Nathaniel made a dismissive gesture. "That's no obstacle. You won't be attending. _I_ will."

My heart dropped to the floor.

"You _what_?"

"Listen, Bartimaeus, I don't need you anymore. You've won her over and now it's time for us to resume our proper roles."

"She's not ready!" I said, too loud and too fast. "Trust me, it'll be a disaster!"

"I think I can handle myself at dinner," Nat said dryly, "Besides, you can't eat real food. How would that look to the girl?"

"I'll figure something out!" I insisted

"No need. I'm delighted with your work here, really. But I don't need your help any longer."

"But…"

"_Leave._"

I was forced to obey. A gloomy cloud had throttled my golden mood, stomped on it, and heaped manure over its corpse. I had worked so hard to get to know Kitty, and now Nathaniel was jumping in to steal my identity. In truth, I had nearly forgotten why I had started courting Kitty in the first place. Now, with my heart in my shoes, I was coming to realize that I had let my self get far too involved.

And what on Earth would Nat do when he found out what Kitty and I had spent our time talking about?


	6. Sealed With a Kiss

Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is the Property of Jonathan Stroud. Cyrano de Bergerac was written by Edmond Rostand, but technically since it's in the public domain it belongs to all of us. ^^

A/N: And finally, we reach the fabled balcony scene. Thanks goes to Lady Noir for beta-ing this chapter, and a great big thank you darkangel8694, Geneive17, earlyrose, Anne Gable, Nari, Stygian Styx, SullenStrange, TheBluePaintedWeirdo, and The Scholastic Brat for your reviews last chapter. I really appreciate them! By the way, you guys have very interesting screen names. Hope you enjoy this next chapter!

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"How do I look?"

Nat stood in front of a full-length mirror, turning this way and that to examine himself from every angle. His coat was cut too wide in the shoulders. It slumped over his wiry frame as if disappointed in the wearer. The stiff collar came up to his chin, and a fountain of flowery lace spilled out the front. His pants strained over his skinny legs like sausage casings.

"Even worse than usual," I told him. "Way worse."

He pretended not to hear me, instead smoothing down his already-limp hair with his fingers.

"It's no use," I said, "You're a disaster. Let's just send me instead, shall we? You're much better looking when you're actually _me_."

"For the last time," Nathaniel snapped, "You are not going. I am."

"She's not ready."

"I _am_ going!"

I pressed Ptolemy's hand to his forehead in an attempt to soothe my frustration.

"At least let me give you a few pointers about what to say to her."

Nathaniel's face coloured. "I no longer require your assistance, Bartimaeus. Now if you don't want me to send you on that vacation after all, then step aside. I have places to be."

"I'm serious," I said, twisting Ptolemy's fingers together anxiously, "There are a lot of things you need to know. Subjects you should, um…avoid. _Most_ subjects actually. Better keep conversation to a minimum. You can talk about polo or knitting if pressed – those are safe topics."

If Kitty started talking to Nathaniel about spying or the resistance, both of us would be in serious danger. Perhaps Nat's affections for Kitty might be deep enough for him to pardon her for treason, but his affections for me certainly weren't.

"I'm not afraid of speaking to her any longer," Nathaniel said, "And I don't need your questionable advice. Get the car ready, I'm going out."

And so it was that I ended up in chauffeur garb, directing Nathaniel's limousine up the quiet, tree-lined drive to Makepeace's towering home.

I pulled up to the curb and killed the motor beside a thick hedgerow that shielded Nat's limo from the house.

"Quick," I said, "It's not too late for us to swap places if we stuff you in the boot."

"Not this again," Nathaniel groaned.

"Stop arguing and take off your jacket!"

Nathaniel's eyes narrowed. "Bartimaeus," he said, "I have made myself perfectly clear. You are to act as my valet tonight and refrain from any interference whatsoever. Now that I know she cares for me, I'm ready to do this for myself. I'm no half-wit; I can make conversation with a young lady without you to hold my hand!"

"If I was holding your hand, said young lady would probably get the wrong idea," I said maliciously.

Nat's finger stabbed toward the house. "Out of the car!" he yelled.

"Fine, speak for yourself then," I grumbled, sliding out of my seat.

At that moment, the hedgerow rustled and Kitty burst forth, spitting leaves. She had obviously just run across the grounds and was gasping for breath.

"Bartimaeus," she said warmly, rearranging her hair as I held the door open for her, "Nice to see you again. Hello John."

Nat muttered a reply, blushing feverishly. She gave him an odd look, and then shrugged and turned to me. "Let's get out of here before they realize I'm gone."

I pried myself away from Nat and Kitty and slid into the driver's seat. Somehow, long after I'd backed out of the drive and joined the heavy evening traffic, I still couldn't stop checking the rearview mirror every few seconds.

"Ms. Jones," my eyes snapped once again to said mirror as Nat cleared his throat awkwardly. "I'm greatly honoured that you consented to join me for dinner tonight…"

Kitty smiled and rested a hand on his shoulder, caressing the lapel of his ridiculous frock coat with her fingers. "Oh, but remember, _I_ invited _you_."

"_Ahh!_"

Everyone screamed as I jerked the steering wheel hard to the right. The tires screeched and the car spun wildly. Kitty and Nat were flung apart, and I heard the smack of Nat's head on the window pane.

"My apologies," I said darkly, "I was avoiding a squirrel."

We proceeded to our destination without much further hanky-panky. Earlier in the day, after much agonizing and pulling of hair, Nat had decided that he and Kitty should have a picnic dinner away from the suspicious eyes of Makepeace's spies, and thus I now piloted the limo toward St. James park, where waited a five-course gourmet dinner, a string quartet, and a bottle of wine so expensive that Nat had had to arrange its previous owner's tragic and mysterious disappearance to obtain it. All this was assembled around a small checkered tablecloth, frayed at the edges, which lay hidden in the grass as if trying to protect itself from the ostentation. I pitied the poor thing.

Nathaniel took Kitty's elbow gingerly and guided her towards the display.

"I suspect I'm underdressed," she said wryly, looking down at her woolen jumper and jeans. "I didn't expect I'd need to wear a three-piece suit to a picnic."

Nathaniel looked uncomfortable and said nothing.

"What, no retort about my fashion sense or your implacable thirst for pretension?" she asked with a smirk.

"I'd hoped you would approve of my efforts to make this dinner special, but if you insist on making light of it, we don't have to eat here," he said stiffly.

Kitty was taken aback, but she sat down anyway. I set to work dishing out the soup course. French onion, with the requisite hunk of soggy, cheese-laden crouton capping the surface.

"Which spoon should I use?" Kitty said lightly, trying to break the suddenly awkward atmosphere, "There's, like, ten here. Or considering the consistency, maybe one of the forks would be more appropriate. Let's see; do I choose the big fork, the little fork, the two-pronged fork, the pitchfork or the tuning fork?"

"The correct utensil is the soup spoon, which you will find located on the right, between the fish knife and the oyster fork."

"You're kidding me, right?"

"I assure you, I am not."

Kitty frowned at his humourless tone. "You're not yourself tonight."

"Quite the opposite, I assure you," I muttered under my breath.

"Bad day at the ministry?" she asked, "Don't tell me all those self-important windbags you work with are getting you down, John."

Nat didn't look pleased. "The daily trials of my co-workers can hardly be something you would find interesting, Ms. Jones."

"Stop calling me Ms. Jones," Kitty said. She looked over her shoulder at the string quartet. "I know there are things we'd best not speak of in present company, but perhaps later…"

"Perhaps later you can continue to insult my chosen profession?"

Wow. Suddenly Nat's bizarre insistence on having a djinni win over his love made perfect sense. The man was awful with women – far worse than I had ever imagined. [1. And I had plenty of imagination where Nat was concerned. The man had the social skills of a flaming, rapier-wielding porcupine.] His defensiveness drove Kitty into uncomfortable silence.

It was time for the oyster course, and Kitty's eyes bulged as I placed the shapeless grey mollusks in front of her. I could tell she was longing to snark some more, but held back in the face of Nat's sulky mood.

Nat seemed to suddenly notice the downward spiral the conversation had taken, and reached out in the most dramatic way he knew.

"Ms. Jones," he said in a low, pained voice, placing his oyster back on the plate, "Please don't call me John. My birthname is Nathaniel."

He paused, breathlessly anticipating her reaction.

"Nathaniel," Kitty repeated slowly. "That's right…I'd forgotten you magicians all go by aliases."

Nat looked disappointed that his reveal had not stirred the strong reaction he was hoping for.

"It takes a lot of trust to admit that," he prodded.

"What, afraid I'll give you an embarrassing nickname?" Kitty joked, "Fatty-Natty or something like that? I know the feeling. People used to meow at me in the schoolyard."

"Are you mocking me?" Nathaniel yelled, eyes flashing. "I shall not be mocked!"

That was it. Kitty's hands balled into fists. "Honestly!" she snapped, "What happened to your sense of humour? You were far more laid-back yesterday. And you talked like you still had two brain cells to rub together. I'm not sure I want to stay here any longer."

"Ms. Jones – _Kathleen_! Wait!"

Kitty's eyes bored into his in a silent challenge, like a pro wrestler staring down his arch foe.

"I…I love you," Nat said helplessly. I cringed.

Kitty's eyebrows arched. "Is that so? Let's hear about it then. I used to think you had some wit in that brain of yours."

"I love you," Nat said with more confidence.

"Do you now? Then tell me _why_."

Nat's lips moved soundlessly, at a loss for what to say.

"Come on," Kitty prodded, "Put that cleverness to the test. Let's see a little of the old John Mandrake."

Nat paled. "I…you are…"

"Tell me about how you love me."

"Completely!"

She scowled and got to her feet.

"Wait," Nat cried, red-faced and sweating, "I don't love you!"

Kitty paused, looking intrigued. "Oh?"

"I adore you!"

Kitty looked disgusted. "That's enough. Your wits have apparently deserted you. For some reason I thought you were a lot more intelligent."

Nat sputtered indignantly. "I speak a hundred languages and–"

"And far less self-important," Kitty interrupted. "What foolish notion. All magicians really are the same, aren't they?"

"But–"

"Bartimaeus, take me home." Kitty upset a platter of various cheeses and stomped toward the limo, fuming.

Nat jerked forward as if to stop her. "But Ms. Jones!" he cried.

Kitty rounded on him, her expression taut and white.

"Don't bother coming by again! We're done here."

She slammed the car door in his face. Nat stood frozen, his jaw gaping like a fish, his arms hanging limply from his shoulders. I sidled up alongside him and gave him a pat on the back.

"Bravo," I said, "Casanova couldn't have done better himself."

XXX

My glee at Nat's horrendous crash-and-burn was severely damped on the drive back to Makepeace's. We had ditched Nat in the park, [2. Even though I knew I'd have to go back for him eventually, I figured a little stint standing alone in the rain would do him good. It was poetic at any rate.] and Kitty was now having a hard time holding it together.

"I shouldn't feel so disappointed," she mumbled, eyes glittering.

My heart lurched. I hadn't thought about how the change in Nat might affect her.

I was uncharacteristically quiet when I returned for Nat, and for once he relinquished the opportunity to yell at me. This was, after all, his own fault.

After a long silence, he spoke. "Turn the car around."

"What?" I asked, astonished.

"Take me to her house," he said, "I can't let it end like this. You've got to help me."

"I'm _not_ helping you." But already I was thinking of the distress in Kitty's voice. I wanted her to be happy, didn't I? And if happiness involved thinking that Nat was a jovial revolutionary, brimming with banter…

Nathaniel drew in a deep breath. "I was wrong not to take your advice, Bartimaeus. You knew this would happen. Now I'm asking you to help me fix it. Please."

I stared at him through the mirror. "Well, since you asked so nicely…" I turned the car around. If Kitty wanted Nathaniel, then she would have him.

The windows of Makepeace's mansion glowed golden in the night. Nat and I walked up the garden path, staying hidden and avoiding the odd spirit sentry. Suddenly Nat caught my arm.

"There!" He whispered harshly.

Kitty. She leaned over the railing of a low balcony, her eyes closed and her brow furrowed. The light from the open door framed her like a halo.

"It's very dark tonight," I murmured, unable to tear my eyes away. "How about I stand under the balcony and tell you what to say?"

Nathaniel consented and we moved to our places. Looking lost between the hydrangea bushes, Nathaniel called out to her.

"Who's there?" Kitty asked, startled.

"It's me. Mandr–er, Nathaniel."

"Nathaniel," Kitty repeated coldly.

"Please, I need to speak to you."

"You've quite thoroughly demonstrated that you have nothing to say."

Nathaniel looked to me, his eyes pleading. The tables had turned indeed.

"Tell her you're a temperamental idiot," I whispered.

_"What?"_

I shot him a significant look.

"I'm a temperamental idiot," Nat said meekly.

Kitty pursed her lips. "Well, that much is true."

"Tell her you're like a crate of tomatoes," I mouthed, with a few illustrative gestures.

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow but repeated it anyway.

"Oh?" Kitty asked, challengingly.

"Occasionally," Nathaniel replied, straining to read my lips, "You find…a rotten one at …the bottom…but…that's no reason…to throw out the whole thing."

"I find I've grown to dislike tomatoes," Kitty replied.

"I…never liked them…much myself. But…we can't let anything…go to waste, can we? One of us is…going to have to beat them. Uh, _eat_ them!"

There was a tiny smile in her voice as she replied. "That's the sort of thing you used to say," she said, "But why are you speaking so choppily?"

Nathaniel froze. "O-Oh…I…"

"Can't you do anything right?" I mumbled at Nat. And unceremoniously, I yanked him under the balcony and emerged in his form.

"I'm speaking normally," I called out in Nat's voice, "But it's dark out, and my words have to grope to find your ears."

"Mine seem to be making their way easily enough."

"You're up there, and I'm down here," I said easily. "My words have to climb up to you, but yours fall down to me."

Kitty leaned further over the railing. "Ah yes, the poor things. Though they seem to be making the climb more easily now. Perhaps the exercise is making them more athletic."

She was beginning to relax, and I took it as a good sign.

"With you so far above," I told her, "Any hard words you let fall will probably crush me."

"Well, we can't have that," she said, "I'll come down." She moved towards the door.

Nathaniel made some frantic gestures at me. It wouldn't do for Kitty to find two Nathaniels waiting for her in the garden.

"Don't!" I said urgently.

"Why not?"

I thought fast. "Well, there you are standing on a balcony, while I'm pleading my case to you from down here. It's stylistically appropriate, I'd say. Shakespeare would approve."

"What a sappy idea," she said with a touch of fondness. But to my immense relief, she stayed where she was.

"Maybe it'll be easier to speak my mind, standing in the shadows. I couldn't think what to say to you before, but now I'm brimming with thoughts."

"And why couldn't you say them to my face at dinner?"

"You're like a volcano," I told her, "A man can think of all kinds of words to describe it from far away, but when someone drops him in the crater, he finds it a bit difficult to be eloquent."

Kitty laughed. "I'm not sure that's a compliment."

"It's pretty apt, nonetheless."

She peered down at me through the rain and darkness. I must have been no more than a silhouette to her. "So then, what is it that you couldn't say while you were treading magma an hour ago?" she asked.

"I wanted to tell you how much I admire you," I said simply. "You have the kind of idealism that only a good-hearted person can have." I thought suddenly of Ptolemy. Of hot Egyptian days spent talking of the future. Of how everything had seemed so much brighter and full of hope. This rainy English night was so different on the surface, and yet when I thought of Kitty…

"And even rarer," I told her, "You have the courage to see it through and enough sense to have real chance." _That_, I thought, was unique to Kitty alone. "Talking to you is pretty much the highlight of my life at the moment. Sometimes I think you're the only worthwhile thing on this miserable planet. I know I was clumsy saying it before, but…I do love you."

I shivered as I said it, knowing immediately that it was true. I did love Kitty. I loved her clever face, her sharp repartee, her defiant smile. And I knew with certainty that she had never thought of me. To her I was no more than a disembodied idea: the voice of Nathaniel. He was the man who would have her in the end. The man whom she loved.

"I don't care if it's impossible, or if our worlds are too far apart to be reconciled. I don't care that it's dangerous, or that it's never been done before. I don't even care that you don't feel the same way. You are astounding, and the part of me that still has a touch of hope will always be drawn to that implacable part of you that refuses to give up. I've seen a lot. _Really_ – you have no idea. But you're the first thing I've cared about in a long, long time."

Kitty was perfectly still, drawing in long slow breaths.

"And I'll ask nothing of you, if only you'll tell me that–"

"That you'll give me a kiss!" Nat shouted.

"What?" Kitty blinked, as if waking from a stupor.

"Shut up Nathaniel!" I glared at him.

"What are you whispering down there?" called Kitty.

"Uh, I was scolding myself. That was insanely rude of me," I said pointedly. "My mother would be ashamed."

"I think you've given up too easily!" Kitty said with a smirk.

"You'll forgive my forwardness, then?"

Kitty laughed. "I'll forgive you. You're only human after all."

"True," I muttered, "I'd forgotten."

"Well," she said coyly, "Come up then and you'll have the kiss you'd like so much."

Nathaniel leapt to his feet, quivering with excitement like a child. I reluctantly ducked out of sight as he scrambled up the apple tree, whose branches hung low over the balcony. Kitty's rain drenched arms wrapped around his neck and he bent low over her face, cupping her cheek in one hand

As their lips met in the kiss I myself had arranged, my knees seemed to give out and I fell back against the trunk of the oak that concealed me. It felt as though my insides were caught in the grip of the Systemic Vice, crushing the blood from my heart and the breath from my lungs.

I clenched my teeth and stared at the entwined silhouettes above me. I tried to reassure myself, to push back the faintness that was making me dizzy. No one could deny that Nathaniel loved her. The regret that her rejection had prompted in him was nothing short of astounding. She could change him, I felt. She could be good for him. And she, perhaps, would come to see the good in him. It was there, though I didn't admit it often. They could work – it wasn't the end of the world.

Why then, did I feel like I was suffocating? I stood alone and forlorn in the lattice shadow of branches as the rain fell hard, fuming to myself. That kiss, my heart insisted, belonged to _me_.


	7. Forever Hold Your Peace

Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is the property of Jonathan Stroud

A/N: Hey guys, sorry for the long wait. I've been on vacation (traveling Europe with Nari-Nick! ^^) so it took a bit longer to get this one done. A million thanks to those who reviewed last chapter: beautyfrompain, Anne Gable, Moss, Nari (I miss you!), Bibby, TheBluePaintedWeirdo, Lisette, Cyndii, SullenStrange, earlyrose, King of Danes, razzle1606, and Deprived Homunculus, you guys are all awesome folks. This chapter was, of course, was betaed by the incomparable Lady Noir. Enjoy!

* * *

The happy duo disappeared into the light from the door, leaving a drenched, miserable djinni hunched in the wet grass below. I pushed the sodden hair from my eyes and tried to decide what to do. Should I follow them? Pry them apart? Cause a distraction? Or should I just bow out gracefully and acknowledge my defeat? I felt scattered in all directions, my head fit to explode, my essence boiling like a lightning-struck lake.

"Yeah, yeah, woe is me," I muttered at my soliloquizing self. "It's your own fault, you moron. You're the one who agreed to this whole messed-up plan in the first place."

I wanted to argue, [1. Which ought to give you a picture of my general mental health at the time,] but the dark churn of my thoughts was broken by the glare of headlights. I squinted as a long black car pulled up the flooded drive, and as if the universe felt it hadn't clobbered me quite enough, the spinning wheels sprayed a stinging spatter of cold grey water into my face.

Out hopped a small figure, bundled up in hat, scarf, and raincoat. He rapped smartly on the door, and a few moments later, Kitty appeared and let him in. Curious now, I shifted into the form of a fly and glided inside moments before the door closed again.

Kitty's eyes rested on me a little too long to be coincidence. Somehow, she knew I was no ordinary housefly.

"Wet night – quite a wet night, indeed! A bad omen!" the stranger babbled conversationally.

Nathaniel lingered uncertainly on the stairs, watching the stranger divest himself of his watery garments and stamp the warmth back into his feet. I gave him a little wave, and his face darkened immediately. That's gratitude for you.

Kitty took the stranger's coat and frowned.

"Can I help you?" she asked, her freezing tone helpfully indicating to the lucky man that he had entered an angry dragoness's lair. Kitty did not take kindly to interruption.

"Ehm, yes. Ms. Jones, is it?"

Without the floppy-brimmed hat in the way, I recognized the interloper as one of the officials from the General Register Office, where the less talented magicians tended to be shoved, out of sight. [2. "Less talented" meaning either the slightly less bloodthirsty, or those endowed with embarrassing bad habits, like embezzling or bedwetting.] He had tiny stick-like limbs and an enormously inflated torso that looked fit to burst through the cheap suit that restrained it.

"Well, I…" The magician shivered under the cooling influence of Kitty's glacial glare. "I have a – a letter for you. It's from Mr. Makepeace himself, Ma'am. Madam. M-my lady."

Kitty raised an eyebrow, but took the proffered envelope without comment.

Kitty's face was one of the most mutable and expressive I'd ever encountered, and I'd like to think that by this point, I was well versed in reading it. Oddly enough, the one that now appeared as her eyes moved over the letter was about as easy to understand as the vague mutterings of a senile Buddhist savant from the bottom of a sealed well.

Alarmed, the fly hovered behind her ear and read over her shoulder.

_Dear Kitty,_

_It is with great urgency that I write to you. Do not panic, my dear, but our nation finds itself under attack. Three hours ago, the Resistance struck the Tower of London and freed some hundred or so political prisoners. Pockets of fighting have sprung up all across the city, and it seems the rebels have some organized plan of attack. We believe the Resistance to be in possession of devastating information about the city's defenses, and what's more, their numbers are far, far greater than any of us supposed. Combined with the stolen weapons they possess, capable of permanently destroying even the strongest of our servants, they are proving to be a severe threat to our control of London._

_Poor old Devereaux is having fits. He has asked me to personally lead a group of our most capable magicians against the invaders. And that is why I am writing, my dear…_

I stopped reading and looked into Kitty's face. Her lips were pale and her eyes were as wide as saucers. Had she not known that the Resistance had chosen tonight to spring their trap? I had no idea what her status was in the group, but she seemed to me to be a dangerous person to leave out of the loop.

Kitty held out her hand discreetly, allowing the grateful fly to rest safe in her cupped palm.

"The resistance is taking London," She said quietly to the rest of the group, "And Makepeace is on his way."

"Taking London?" choked the small, round official, nearly bowling himself over with his own amazement.

"On his way here?" said Nathaniel, equally unsettled.

"Yes," Kitty's voice grew stronger and more confident, "And listen to what he says: '_And that is why I am writing, my dear. While I am gone, there will be no one to look after you. That is why I have sent this gentleman along – to marry you to my good friend Mr. Mandrake.'_"

"_What?_" cried Nathaniel. His mouth gaped open like a portal to the dimension of confusion. "He wants us to get married? _Him?_"

That was not, in fact, what the letter had said. In reality, it read as follows:

_And that is why I am writing, my dear. I cannot forget our recent discussion. Knowing that you feel as I do, I cannot go into battle and leave you behind. Gather your things together as quickly as you can – I shall arrive shortly, and Mr. Saunders, the gentleman who delivered you this letter, shall marry us without further delay. I have contacts in France who will be happy to shelter us until this whole thing blows over._

My heart sank to the bottom of my little insect toes.

"Marry?" I said, shooting up from Kitty's palm and startling the stranger, "Aren't you two – I mean, isn't this a little fast? You've barely met!"

"Who am I to contradict Mr. Makepeace?" Kitty said loftily.

"But–"

"There's no sense in arguing, Bartimaeus," Nat said sharply, "Kitty and I will just have to obey."

"What a noble sacrifice," I muttered.

"Now see here," the fat little magician interrupted, "I'm not entirely sure this is all legal. It's most irregular…"

"Oh, I forgot to read the postscript," Kitty said, squinting theatrically at the page. "_'P.S., Please inform Mr. Saunders that he will, of course, receive generous compensation for the inconvenience.'_"

"Yes but…"

"'_Possibly including a promotion and a summer home in Scotland.'_"

"That's very…"

"_'And a knighthood.'_"

"Oh all right, I get the picture," Saunders huffed. "I suppose I ought to begin the ceremony?"

The fly trembled in the air. This couldn't be happening to me. What had I done to piss off Fate so badly? Defy my destiny? Cheat death? Insult its mother?

There stood Nat and Kitty, hand in hand; ready to pledge their lives to each other while a red-faced man in a skin-tight suit recited a speech about the power of love. What had started out as a pretty crummy day was now turning into a Chernobyl-worthy disaster complete with the emotional equivalent of a radioactive, fire-monster shambling down the street eating civilians. I stared at them the way one might stare at an oncoming tidal wave.

"It's too bad Makepeace won't make it in time for the ceremony," Kitty murmured above the magician's drone, her eyes fixed on me.

That was a little thing I liked to refer to as sarcasm. I picked up on Kitty's real message immediately. _Stall him._

I was now presented with one of those classic little moral dilemmas. Did I do as Kitty asked and prevent Makepeace from barging in on their impromptu wedding, or did I dally outside and let him drag the two apart like I was currently longing to attempt?

"I just know I'm going to regret this," I mumbled. And the fly departed.

You might consider me a world-class chump for playing along with this whole farce, but let's be fair – was there any other choice? Time was running out, Makepeace was coming for her, and Kitty was dead-set on marrying Mandrake. Yes, she thought that he and I were the same person, but if she knew the truth it wouldn't have changed things.

You disagree? Let's imagine I was to tell her. Do you think she'd be pleased to know that Nat and I had duped her? Was a scorned Nat about to set me free and let us live happily ever after? Would Kitty see anything in a man-eating shape-shifter from a plane of chaos? Yeah right.

The best I could do was to help her now.

It wasn't hard to find Makepeace – unlike most magicians, who were chauffeured around in austere, black limousines, his vehicle was an orange and yellow sports car that looked nearly as eccentric as he did. I found it mere seconds away from the house, searing through the grey rain with the power of pure ostentation.

The fly wove between raindrops, angled itself above the road, and changed back into a boy, falling hard onto the pavement just in time to bounce off Makepeace's front fender. It wasn't fun, even for a djinni, but at least it wasn't fatal either.

The car screeched to a halt and two men rushed out, swearing and shouting over the boy's still form. [3. Incidentally, this form was not Ptolemy. That would have been counterproductive, considering how the old playwright knew that form as Nat's cheeky servant.]

"Look what you've done, Ernest!" Makepeace yelled at his chauffeur.

"It's not my fault, Mr. Makepeace, sir – fell from the bleeding sky, he did!"

"Do I pay you to run down street urchins? This will be a public relations nightmare! Good heavens!"

The chauffeur prodded me with the toe of his muddy boot. "He's not moving, sir. Whaddaya want me to do?"

"Me? You're the one to blame for this!"

"He fell from the sky! C'mon, didn't you see it too?"

Makepeace shuffled uncertainly. "Never mind that now. How shall we deal with this little problem?"

"Do you figure he's an orphan? If we roll him under a bush maybe no one will notice he's missing."

I decided to save myself further harassment and leapt suddenly to my feet, nearly scaring the plump magician right out of his strange purple fur coat.

"I'm not dead!" I shrieked at the top of my lungs, "I simply fell!"

"He's alive, boss. Let's get outta here!"

The chauffeur was running for it, but I grabbed hold of Makepeace's sleeve before he could escape into the car.

"I fell from the moon!" I yelled, looking quite deranged, "I am the world's first unassisted space traveler!"

"You must have scrambled his brains when you hit him," Makepeace whispered severely to Ernest. "He's quite mad!"

"I am not mad! _You_ must be mad for denying my great scientific breakthrough! It was so easy. All I had to do was catch hold of a comet's tail and it carried me up through the stars…" I turned my head reverently to the heavens.

"Bonkers. I've heard enough. Ernest, let's go." Makepeace found the skinny street kid uncommonly difficult to shake off. The grip I had on his arm could have dragged a steamboat behind a moving train.

"See how damp my coat is?" I said, conspiratorially whispering in his ear, "I went for a swim in the sea of tranquility!"

"Your coat is damp because it's raining. Now let me pass!"

I wrapped my arm tightly around his shoulders in a chummy sort of way. "Don't you want to know if the moon is made of cheese? Well it isn't. Except fossilized cheese, maybe. Here, I brought a moon rock home for you to try."

"That's a pebble from the street you imbecile!"

"But what about the flora and fauna? The moon is covered in craters, each one about five feet deep. In the center of each is a live meteorite, munching away at moon dust. They are friendly and easy to tame if you –"

"Shut up and release me!" Makepeace shouted.

"But I haven't finished documenting my travels. The king and queen of the moon made me their emperor…"

"I don't care! Let me go!"

From far off, a church bell rang. One o'clock.

I instantly released Makepeace's arm and became Ptolemy.

"That should be enough time. Ms. Jones and Mr. Mandrake are married by now. You should go in and give them your regards."

Makepeace was flabbergasted. His eyes bulged and his sagging jaw worked up and down like a gulping mackerel.

"What? Married! And you – I know you! Mandrake's…Ernest, get in the car! This instant!"

The bright coloured car took off so fast that it practically dried the pavement under its tires. I trotted behind it at a leisurely pace.

Even the rainy shadows of the garden seemed to recoil at Makepeace's wrath. He stalked through it on a beeline for the house and threw open the doors in a flamboyant manner that couldn't have been more dramatic if there had been a flare of lighting to suitably backlight him in the doorframe.

But he was too late.

"You may kiss the bride," the stout official intoned.

I looked at the floor as Kitty and Nathaniel obeyed.

"Well, well," Makepeace drawled, stalking towards the couple like a panther, "I suppose I am to congratulate you two on your unexpected nuptials?"

Nat shrank back at the playwright's chilly voice. He wrapped a protective arm around Kitty, looking like he might faint. Kitty, for her part, was smug as a cat on a sunny windowsill.

"Quentin Makepeace," she said, her voice dripping with false warmth, "How nice of you to join us."

"I hope I'm not _interrupting_." He snarled.

"Oh, the ceremony is quite finished," was the airy reply, "It was good of you to send this fellow to marry us. Since he's an official from the General Register Office, the proceedings are completely binding. You think of everything." She smirked.

Makepeace gave her a dark look. "I see," he said. "Pity the wedding night will have to be interrupted. I'm leading a force against the Resistance you know, and I've come to take Mr. Mandrake with me. _Tonight_."

"You can't!" Kitty sputtered.

"Oh, but I can. You understand, my dear. _Someone_ must stand up to these little terrorists. I hear they're particularly well-armed. You might want to take the opportunity to say farewell to your beloved – this could be the last time you ever see him, you know."

Her eyes flashed. "You're not even going to the war! You told me you were going to run like a coward!"

"Ah, but I seem to have found new courage. Come now, Kitty, say goodbye to Mr. Mandrake."

"You horrible little–"

"And I'm sorry to hear you'll be leaving, but I agree that it would be unseemly for a married woman to live in another man's house. Best pack your things my dear."

"What?"

"I'm kicking you out. You might want to run upstairs and throw a few things in a bag before I call the Night Police about the Commoner girl trespassing on my property."

I expected Kitty to spring forward and start whaling on his puffy red face, but instead, after a minute of silent, tectonic fury, her entire posture imploded and she trudged up the stairs like Makepeace had told her to. I stared after her a moment in shock, until I collected my senses and ran after her.

"Kitty!" I whispered, sliding into her room seconds before she slammed the door with enough force to knock over her bookshelf.

She didn't look at me, instead yanking open a drawer and flinging its contents into a canvas bag.

"That vindictive pig," she said tightly, dumping a load of books onto the twisted knot of clothes, "He's only doing this to punish me."

"Do you have somewhere to go?" I asked.

"I'll meet up with the Resistance," she said, grunting as she tried and failed to pull the zipper closed, "It's just as well he's kicking me out. The time for espionage is over. It's pure straightforward battle from here on out."

"Yeah, by the way, what's happening with that, exactly?"

Kitty was now tearing a good-sized hole in her mattress with a paperknife.

"That idiot Nick Drew's gone and started the uprising ahead of schedule." From between the box springs she drew a huge wad of cash and a handful of foreign passports. "The Resistance and the Magicians are about to go head to head."

"So, going to be messy, then?"

Kitty sighed and set down the silver claymore she'd been trying to stuff into a handbag the size of a doily.

"It's going to be _very_ messy. And Nat and I – and you, of course – are going to be on opposite sides of a war." She set her hand on my shoulder and held Ptolemy's gaze with solemn eyes. "Keep him safe for me. Please?"

"I'll…try."

"And make sure he writes me letters. I'll be on the move, but if he writes I'll find a way to get them."

I covered her hand with my own and squeezed it gently. "You'll get letters from him," I told her. "If nothing else, Kitty, I can promise you that."


	8. In Love and War

Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is the Property of Jonathan Stroud. Cyrano de Bergerac was written by Edmond Rostand, but technically since it's in the public domain it belongs to all of us. ^^

A/N: A big thanks to all those of you who cheered me up by reviewing: SullenStrange (trip was awesome, thanks for asking!), Anne Gable, Marielakahermy, razzle1606, Lisette (yes you may!), and Nari. And a million thanks Lady Noir for beta-ing this chapter. By the way, I forget to mention last chapter, but Nari has done an amazing drawing of chapter 6. You can see it at rhysenne(dot)deviantart(dot)com(slash)(number sign)(slash)d2vw17w or follow the direct link in my profile. Check it out, she's amazing!

* * *

A wave of shouting was rising up on all sides, but whether it was of joy or fear, friend or foe, victory or defeat, I couldn't say. I couldn't see more than five feet through the clouds of smoke that billowed over the make-shift ramparts.

And when I say makeshift, I mean it. The streets had been barricaded with whatever odds and ends the magicians had yanked from the rows of flats on either side of the street. Sofas, armchairs, dining room tables, pillows, picture frames, refrigerator doors, potted geraniums, and even a plastic aquarium with a confused-looking gerbil still inside, all knotted together to form the structure that was ostensibly supposed to protect us from missiles and stave off the enemy. [1. Military engineers had strutted around for hours dictating which piece of silk hosiery ought to form the foundation and which pile of canned beans should shield the left flank. Supposedly this was to ensure our barricade projected a level of professionalism, but in reality the haphazard thing resembled a department store after a tornado.]

A crimson flare lit the sky a very appropriate colour.

War again. I always seemed to be finding myself in the middle of them. Not that this was remotely like any of the other wars I'd had a hand in. You couldn't even call this a war, really. More like a flood of violent street-skirmishes. None of us were used to this sort of urban guerilla warfare. The most disconcerting thing was the total and absolute lack of spirits on the other team. Neither hide of afrit nor tail of imp had been spotted among the Commoners' ranks over the past three days of fighting. The blasts of scorching light that occasionally sailed our way were of the cheap, canned quality that came from a mass-manufactured Inferno Stick or – _I kid you not_ – from Roman candles. The Commoners' true power was in their ceaseless rage-induced stamina, their heavy stock of silver weaponry, and of course, the dreaded Weapon X4.

"Do you see anything?" Nat had climbed up the battlement behind me.

"Can't see anything through this smoke." I muttered. Nonetheless, I continued staring into it as if I could read the future in its grey tendrils. I found it hard to look at Nat these days.

"Are you…doing okay?" He asked cautiously.

Nat, care? I took a good look at him then. He looked as worn and splintered as his frayed leather shoes. A vacant look had taken over his face. Soot caked his hands, and his knees were inexplicably covered in flour. Probably yet another genius addition to our fortifications.

"What, me? Never better. In my element and all that." My eyes strayed involuntarily, and Nathaniel followed my gaze.

It was the imp below us that had caught my attention. The scaly bluish thing was curled up on a detached truck grill that protruded from the bottom of the mountain of rubble. It was twitching epileptically, its bloodshot eyes rolling back and forth in their sockets. Cold sweat glistened on its clammy skin. The view from the third plane was even nastier. For the past two days, every spirit on the ramparts had been watching the creature from the corner of their eyes. Its periodic gasps were like claps of thunder in our ears.

"X4," Nat proclaimed grimly, "Is that what's been bothering you lately?"

The imp was the first victim in our unit so far. His name was Fubbel and he'd been struck down only two days before. Three seconds later he had collapsed, and the symptoms had progressed from there. I would know – I'd been the one to pull the tranquillizer dark from his neck.

"He's no use to anyone now," My voice sounded alien to my ears. Too dead. "But they didn't dismiss him."

"It wouldn't help," Nat said, "It's infected his essence irreversibly. That's the way X4 works. If they send him back to the Other Place, he'll still die."

"Better there than here."

Nathaniel contemplated Ptolemy awhile longer, an anxious expression fixed on his face.

"I…I'll see what I can do. Who's his master? Matthews? I'll talk to him."

Nat hurried off. I didn't thank him, though he was probably expecting me to.

I made my way down the wall as slowly as possible. At the bottom, the magicians of the newly formed Temporary Mobile Unit 36 of the National Army of Britain had made their encampment. As far as fighting forces go, it was probably the worst I'd ever seen. Imagine an entire unit formed from puffy, vain politicians yanked right out of the lap of luxury. Not pretty. They spent ninety-nine percent of the time squabbling over designations and the chain of command. The senior officials took up abode in the now-empty flats, the less fortunate trying to cobble comfortable living arrangements out of bits of furniture stolen from the barricade. It was probably the only army where every soldier slept in his own four-poster bed with velvet curtains, and definitely the only army where every soldier spent half his time applying eau de cologne and chastising his neighbors for breaches of etiquette.

Luckily for them, magicians don't exactly require things like strategy or tact to be successful in war. That was what we were for, after all. Shifts of djinn and foliots collected on the ridge of the barricade, shooting magic into the dense smoke while imps ran up and down, patching blasted holes with whatever they could find. If it hadn't been for them, the outpost would have fallen days ago.

"Bartimaeus, I've been looking for you." A white leopardess bounded up to me, her muzzle scratched and her fur sprinkled with patchy burns.

"What's up?" I asked Queezle.

"Right now?" the leopardess shook her head, "Nothing. The attack's tapered off. I'd guess they're regrouping, or maybe waiting for reinforcements. With all this haze in the air, the scrying imps haven't been able to get a good look."

"Ah."

Queezle looked troubled. "I think they might have created that smoke-screen on purpose."

I remembered the brief lesson I'd given Kitty on the ins-and-outs of scrying. I snuck a glance over the battlements, wondering if Kitty was somewhere in the billowing grey clouds beyond. Perhaps not. The Resistance was all over the city, and there had to be more than one Commoner capable of innovation.

"They'll visit us again in a few hours, probably. They know they have the advantage."

Queezle tried very hard not to glance over at Fubbel.

"That's not going to be us," I told her firmly. She nodded, though we both knew I was lying.

"It'd be nice if Mandrake would do us a favour and get his head bashed in," she said wistfully, "I'd love to be out of here. Leave the government to its fate and let the Commoners' take over, eh?"

I made a noncommittal sound. Yes, I wanted the commoners to win, but the mental image of Nat getting his brains blown out made me cringe.

"They're going to win either way," I said. "There's no way these monkeys could possibly pull it together enough to put down a rebellion."

"Speaking of monkeys," Queezle said slyly, "Look who's here."

Makepeace, resplendent in a lavender silk dressing gown, was bobbing through the ranks of soldiers, stopping here and there to pat one on the shoulder or shake hands.

"He certainly is making an effort to be seen, _now_," she said, "Somehow I didn't notice him while the fighting was hot."

"_Shh_," I said as a crowd began to form around the purple playwright, "I think he's going to make a speech."

The two of us elbowed our way into the growing group of soldiers. Makepeace stepped up, using an overturned dresser drawer for a stage. Everyone waited expectantly as he mopped his red face with a handkerchief and toyed with the chain of his pocket watch.

"My dear friends," the man huffed out at last, "Under my guidance, you have fought long and hard. Today, you must rally your bravery. I have some unfortunate news to give you all, but fear not! If we stand strong, our foes will flee like cowards."

"Wow, that would be the height of irony, wouldn't it?"

Makepeace froze. Every magician in the crowd turned in horror to the Egyptian boy who'd spoken, and the closer ones backed away as if they thought a bolt might fall out of the sky and smite him.

The corpulent magician tried to cow me with his eyes, but I held my ground defiantly.

"Where's Mandrake?" Makepeace growled, "Tell him to get his slave under control. Strategy meetings are not for demons."

"Oh really? Because as far as I can tell, we _demons_ are the ones strategizing around here. We're the only ones planning battles, the only ones fighting, the only ones scouting behind enemy lines. But we won't be the only ones dying. You can be sure of that."

"Silence, djinni!"

"Come on, you think hiding back here giving speeches is going to save you? You're surrounded, outnumbered, and your reinforcements are late. You're doomed. Of course, maybe if your troops were given a little, oh I don't know, _leadership_, they might have actually turned things around. But whenever the fighting starts, the great Makepeace mysteriously disappears. I notice you don't wear those bright coloured clothes on the battlefield."

Makepeace clutched his dressing gown close and snarled. "I'm not about to make myself a walking target!"

I laughed. "And you wonder why you've got a morale problem in the camp? If you had a shred of courage you'd be out there leading the charge. But nope, the robe gets flung off and you're cowering at the bottom of a pickle barrel once the Detonations get flying."

[2. This was something of a hyperbole. There's no way Makepeace could squeeze himself into a pickle barrel. An elephant crate? Maybe. A pickle barrel? No.]

Makepeace's eyes were flashing with unparalleled fury, which would have been amusing if I hadn't started to suspect I'd gone too far. Makepeace's voice, when it came, was lined with cold danger.

"Bartimaeus," he purred, "Perhaps you'd be good enough to let me finish my announcement? I was about to deliver some bad news. Unfortunately, I've just received word that our reinforcements will not be coming."

An uneasy murmur rippled through the crowd.

"The government forces are retreating to the river, and you have all been chosen to stand your ground here and hold off the resistance. Doubtless, you shall all die. I, of course, will be leaving immediately to join Devereaux. Bartimaeus, perhaps I'll leave the command to your master and you can tell me if he meets your high-and-mighty standards."

He shrugged off his robe and whipped it at me. The enormous silk slapped down over me like a collapsed tent.

"Now's your chance," he smirked, "Let's see you lead the assault with a giant target on your back."

"Oh yeah? Maybe I will," I yelled back.

There was an edge of panic in the air, which was not soothed by Makepeace's mocking smile. He tucked his hands behind his back and gave a little bow to the rumbling crowd.

"Thank you all for sacrificing your lives for the glory of the British Empire. Good day."

XXX

There were precious few minutes left before the Commoner's assault. Makepeace was long gone, having disappeared into an armoured vehicle, while his personal bodyguards fought off a swarm of furious politicians. Nathaniel was running here and there, trying hopelessly to whip up some fighting spirit in his resigned troops.

Me? I actually had priorities.

'_Dear Kitty,' _

Those two words stared back up at me, stark, black, and funeral-like on the blank paper. These would be my last words to Kitty, a final farewell. There was so much I wanted to tell her, so much I wanted to admit. Writing the letter was a rush, like that horrible, wonderful moment in the garden, where for a moment I had been free to express everything I'd always wanted to say on the topic of Kathleen Jones. A feeling that abruptly collapsed as I signed Nat's name at the bottom. With a sigh, I rolled the letter into a tube and trudged through the camp to the communications outpost.

"You gotta 'nother message to send, gov?" the messenger imp on duty squawked hopefully.

"I'll bet you're glad to be getting out of here before the fighting starts," I muttered.

I was about to hand it over to him, but an alarming sound stopped me. The sound of Nat's voice.

"There you are, I've been trying to find you," the young magician called. I swept the letter behind my back and turned to face him, guiltily.

"Hey there! Uh, me? I've just been wandering around, ha ha. Say, don't you have some important business to see to right now?"

Nat grimaced. "Ugh, yes. I'm run off my feet. The camp's a mess. But let's put that aside for a moment. I'd like to have a bit of a talk, if you don't mind."

I wavered awkwardly in place as Nathaniel shooed the messenger imp away and turned to me. There was something off in his manner; the pensive gaze he studied me with was extremely unnerving.

The silence grew stifling. I was on the verge of shouting something inane just to break the tension when he finally spoke.

"Bartimaeus, we're not going to survive this," he announced softly.

"Yeah, I'm well aware."

"And before we…before the fighting starts, I just need to say that…well…we've been together a long time, you and I, haven't we?"

"If that's what you wanted to say, you'll be gratified to know that I'm perfectly aware of just how long you've shackled me here."

Nat raised an eyebrow. "I'm sure it hasn't been the worst association of your career."

"Well…" he had me there.

"I wanted to say I'm grateful. For your help with Kitty."

I gaped. "Who are you and what have you done with Nathaniel?"

"I'm sure it was a burden on you, but you did a great job. Beyond the call of duty, as they say."

"Thanks, I guess."

"Over the past few weeks," he continued without taking a breath or looking me in the eye, "I've come to see you as a friend."

"And I…wait a second, a _what_?

"And with that in mind," he continued, ignoring my shock, "There's something I want you to…well…" he pulled a small glass vial from his pocket and fiddled absently with the stopper. "It isn't perfect. It hasn't even been tested yet. But if you…" he trailed off again, looking at me hopefully.

Ptolemy's face was a picture of confusion. "What isn't perfect? You're going to have to try a bit harder to communicate here, kiddo."

Nathaniel took a deep breath. "This is really important. Maybe we should talk about it somewhere else. What are you doing over at Communications anyway?"

I shrugged. "Oh, just…"

"Is that a letter? Who are _you_ writing letters to?"

I stared at the roll of paper in my hand as if I'd never seen it before. "What, this? It's…"

Nathaniel's strangely intense mood had evaporated. He frowned at me like a parent who'd caught their wayward child with a hand in the cookie jar.

"It's for her, isn't it? Why didn't you tell me you were still writing her letters?"

"Umm…"

"We're married. You're job is over. I told you I didn't need anything more from you! Why are you still doing it?"

. "I'm not! It's nothing! Just a friendly hello, okay?"

The vial disappeared back into Nat's pocket, and his hand reached out for the letter. I shied away.

"Let me see that," he said.

"But–" There was nothing I could do to disobey a direct order.

I felt like I was going to choke or possibly explode as Nathaniel's eyes skimmed over the page. I watched him closely, alarm surging in my veins as his eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. He looked at me a long, uncomfortable moment before saying anything.

"Look," I tried to say, "I just–"

"You love her," he accused.

My heart dropped.

"W-What makes you say that?" I said, making a terrible attempt at lightheartedness.

"Don't lie; it's dripping from every word," he gave a stressed little laugh, "Who would have thought? A djinni falling in love with a human! Ridiculous."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I muttered at the ground.

"You're in love with my wife. You're sending her letters!"

"I'm not!"

"What is this, then?" he yelled, waving the notepaper under my nose. "A grocery list? I ought to dismiss you right now!"

"I'd be much obliged," I muttered.

"Don't talk back to me!"

Fury stretched taught between us like an elastic band. I don't think we'd ever hated each other as much as we did in that one moment. It would have come to blows if the alert signal hadn't suddenly gone off. We jumped as the flare screamed its way into the sky and burst violent orange. The Resistance was attacking.

Grimly, Nat tore his eyes from the spectacle. I flinched as he the shoved the letter into his pocket with unnecessary force, and turned away.

"We'll talk about this later," he said coldly. "Right now we've a war to fight. Stoggles! Queezle! To me!"

Together we ran for the barricade, over which the commoners poured like a flood of black ants bearing loads of silver.

_Well, goodbye world_, I thought, _it's been interesting._


	9. Farewell

Disclaimer: Bartimaeus Trilogy is the Property of Jonathan Stroud. Cyrano de Bergerac was written by Edmond Rostand, but technically since it's in the public domain, it belongs to all of us. ^^

A/N: Remember that thing I warned you about in chapter one? Well, it's happening now. Only one more chapter left to go! Thanks so much for reviewing last chapter - Caris L. Clearwater, Anne Gable, Nari, Mochabelle, Stygian Styx, K, Moss, Lisette, bookworm, and Alzira! This chapter was betaed by the magnificent Lady Noir.

* * *

We ran for the barricade, sweeping past the dazed, unprepared magicians and into the chaotic clash of djinn battling the commoners who flowed over the barricade like a deadly tide.

"We need to drive them back, regain the high ground," Nat panted. He'd never been an athletic type, and after our brief sprint, he looked ready to fall apart at the seams.

"Maybe you should take a bathroom break first." I said, and was rudely ignored.

Instead, Nat snatched some sort of Lightning Staff from one of the guards and began scrambling up the rough face of the barricade. Queezle, Stoggles, and I followed gracefully behind.

[1. Maybe not so gracefully in Stoggles' case. It's tough to be graceful when you have twelve-inch spikes jutting out of your knees and elbows.]

There were commoners all around us, racing down into the magician's camp, but I left them alone. Kitty's people were the ones _I_ was cheering for.

Nathaniel, on the other hand, was a different story. He ran along the top of the barricade, kicking away the ladders the rebels were using to scale its sides. For each one he knocked down, two more took its place. The magician was white with fury and exertion, but the commoners on the barricades paid him almost no attention, instead flinging projectiles down into the mob below.

"Stop!" Nat cried out imperiously to a spry-looking youth who happened to be running by. He leveled his staff at the man's head.

"Shove over," the kid replied, knocking the staff away with a swipe of his hand. Nathaniel lunged for his weapon.

"Get him! Now!" he yelled.

I folded my arms. If Nat thought an order as vague as that was going to bind me to his will he had another thing coming. My master scowled as he retrieved the staff and used it to nudge me forward like a shepherd prodding a disobedient sheep.

"Come on, Bartimaeus!"

"Not on your–"

I flinched as a jet of green light shot from behind us and carried the unfortunate rebel youth, screaming, over the edge.

"Well done, Queezle," Nat commended. He shot me a look of deep suspicion. "We have to defend this wall; I want none of your disobedience, Bartimaeus!"

The leopardess swiped her tail, and another commoner went sailing over the edge. With a final glare, Nat released my gaze and ran off to occupy himself by zapping commoners with his staff.

I tried to avoid the fighting. Even when the odd rebel realized that an Egyptian boy in a long lavender dressing gown was an unusual sight in the middle of a battle and hastened to attack what must therefore be a djinni, I merely ducked out of the way and found a new place to hide. Nat may have told me to defend the wall, but he never specified how or from whom. By this point, my master was too exasperated to care.

"Why are you dancing around like a lunatic?" Queezle demanded, shooting a Detonation from a taloned paw.

I shrugged and let her smoldering target run past me. "I just think we'd all be better off if–"

"Everyone clear the wall!" A Resistance Fighter ran by, shouting to his comrades. Queezle and I shared a mystified glance. Suddenly, as if on cue, the commoners streamed down from the walls, leaving the rest of us staring after them in abject confusion.

"Oi, are they retreatin', then?" Stoggles asked.

"Why would they?" I asked, "They're winning."

"Look!" Queezle pointed urgently to the commoner's side of the street, where a small group were advancing carefully, carrying a mysterious metal briefcase between them. Nathaniel squinted down at them, then shot up like an arrow.

"Take them down!" he cried, "It's a bomb! They're trying to break through the barricade!"

It was too late. The barricade exploded. Bits of wood, stone shrapnel, and broken kitchen appliances were flung into the air. The structure lurched, then partially collapsed, imploding in on itself like a sinkhole. I looked up just in time to meet Nathaniel's wide eyes as he tumbled off of the crumbling edge.

XXX

Once the dust settled, the battle recommenced in full force. A gaping hole had been blown in the barricade, and the Resistance pushed through en masse. Atop the remains of the structure, we three spirits stood frozen, staring at the spot from which our master had disappeared.

"Well..." said Queezle, flexing her forepaws experimentally, "We're still here, so he can't be dead."

"Maybe he's just barely clinging to life," I said hopefully. "If we wait around a few minutes, he might–"

"Hey!" an angry, unwelcome voice called from far below, "You three better be working!"

We leaned over the lip of the rampart and there he was in the street below, dusty and bruised, but unfortunately still in tact.

"Don't just stand there, push them back!" Nathaniel yelled, "Our people will need time to repair the breach!"

"I'm on it!" Queezle called back, saluting.

The white leopardess sailed past me on a pair of enormous butterfly wings, swooping low to rain fire into the mass of commoners breaching the barricade. I glowered down at her – she was such a boot-licker.

"Bartimaeus," she called as she looped back up through the air, "Get down there and – arghh!" Something small and metallic punched a fist-sized hole in Queezle's wing. The heavy cat twisted erratically in the air and landed hard in a furry pile. This wasn't good – the commoners flocked around her like vultures.

"Queezle!" Stoggles cried out, his talons gripping the back of Ptolemy's head most unpleasantly. A sour feeling settled in my stomach. This battle wasn't as cut-and-dry as I'd thought. I had friends on both sides, and Queezle was one of them.

"They got her with a horseshoe," I said quickly, "Come on."

I grabbed the imp by his tail and leapt off the ridge of the barricade. Makepeace's enormous silk robe streaked down behind me like a parachute.

[2. It really tended to get in the way, but I was too belligerent to stop wearing it.]

"My knees," I moaned as I landed with a jolt.

"I shink Queeshle ish okay," Stoggles said, spitting out a face-full of lavender fabric.

Nathaniel had made his way to Queezle's side. The two were cutting through the scrapping knot of commoners and magicians, Nat swinging an enchanted staff and Queezle, though battered, snapping at heels with her lips peeled back, revealing an impressive set of teeth.

I moved in their direction, stepping between two dueling opponents, ducking under the arc of a silver sword, and dodging a fireball from one of the damn roman candles.

Suddenly, a blonde girl in a mask charged towards Stoggles and I, and for a moment I froze up completely. Something in her slender figure and grim-set mouth reminded me of Kitty. I almost didn't shake it off in time to grab Stoggles by the scruff of his neck and swing him out of the way of the girl's iron pitchfork. I had to clear my head. There was a whole new dimension to this battle – a psychological one. Every masked figure was Kitty, every fallen foe her friend or confidant.

"A pitchfork?" I called out to the girl, "In this day and age? _Really?_"

She didn't reply, instead leveling the tines of her weapon at me and charging once again. I rolled out of the way, letting the freezing metal swipe over my head, and landed crouched on my feet behind her.

She whirled around, but not fast enough to prevent me from lobbing a brick in her direction. The bit of rubble collided hard with the pitchfork, ripping it from her grasp. Off balance, she slipped on the pavement and hit her head on a lamppost, knocking herself out entirely. Huh. If all the commoners were this competent, Nat's lot might have had a chance after all. I gathered up the comatose girl and dragged her safely away from the fighting, where she wouldn't catch a stray blow. No harm no foul.

Queezle was fine, pitch-fork girl was okay...this wasn't so bad. Maybe navigating my divided loyalties wouldn't be as tricky as I had thought.

_Whoosh_! I jumped back and stared in alarm at a small feathered dart that had lodged itself into the wall right behind my left temple.

An X4 tranquillizer dart to be precise.

With effort, I pried my eyes away from the terrifying silver liquid dribbling down the tip of the sleek needle and surveyed the area. There. Amongst the pairs of scrapping foes, a ragged looking young man stood alone, tranquillizer gun in hand. He raised his arm, tensed his trigger finger to shoot again...

Time for me to get out of here.

I made the fastest transformation of my life, compressing my essence into the form of a tiny flea. I whizzed out of the armhole as the dressing gown slumped to the ground like a collapsing bouncy castle. So much for my bravado. As the blond man glanced around in confusion, I circled behind him and plunged into the safety of Nat's tangled hair.

"What are you doing?" My master said, slapping at his scalp, "Get out there and fight!"

Nat jumped as a freezing ball of blue light coalesced behind his ear and shot off towards the bearded blond.

"How about I fight from here?" I said hopefully, shooting off yet another Shivering Glacation at my opponent. It was no use. He was as impressively resilient as those first commoners' who had shrugged off Queezle's Detonations the day I'd met Kitty for the first time.

The gun fired again, and a second dart peeled through the air. Queezle leapt out of the way with a spooked yelp. Nathaniel stiffened.

"Is that...?"

"X4," I confirmed. "Let's get out of here while we still can."

Rather than take my excellent advice, Nathaniel strode forward with determined step. "Just you wait. I'll take him out," he mumbled. It occurred to me that Nat's head was perhaps not the safest locale in the area, and that I really should abandon it before it inevitably rolled from its shoulders.

Before I could do so, Nat was swinging his staff at the enemy. The blond retreated a step, fending off the blow with the butt of the tranquilizer gun. For a moment, their weapons locked together; Nat's willow-frond arms strained to push the staff forwards.

"Are you mad?" I yelled, "Just run! Everyone's gone, look around you!" It was true – either we'd advanced too far into enemy lines, or the magicians had fallen back. Nathaniel and his servants were stranded in a sea of commoners.

To my right, a circle of black-masked Resistance Fighters held Queezle and Stoggles at the point of their silver spears. The leopardess shot me a sheepish look.

"Your djinn are at our mercy. Surrender magician!" The blond man yelled, spittle flinging in every direction.

"Never!" Nathaniel cried, apparently under yet another one of his occasional, inconvenient delusions of gentleman's honor.

The man lowered the gun and whipped out a razor-thin knife. He pressed it gently to Nat's throat and the boy gulped.

"Drop your weapon!"

The staff clattered to the ground.

"Now tell your other djinni to show himself!"

I tensed, getting ready to run for it. Blondie's gun was loose in his grip, and if I chose a winged form I could be over the roof of those northernmost buildings in about ten seconds...

"I won't," Nat whispered.

Okay, time to get out of - wait, _what?_ Nat wasn't giving me away? I was absolutely stunned. Was Nathaniel protecting me? I knew he'd said some sappy thing about friendship earlier, but that was before he'd found out about...well, Kitty.

"Alright then," the man said in his ugly, gloating voice, "I have no compunctions against killing you either way."

Damn it all, I couldn't let them execute him like this.

"I'm right here," I said, materializing as Ptolemy. Instantly, a horde of silver blades were poking at my skin. Nathaniel's wide eyes met mine, and I nodded subtly.

"Ah, there you are. Thanks for saving me some trouble of hunting you down," the blond man said.

"We surrender," I told him, "We haven't got anything against commoners. Go take over the city, burn the parliament buildings, frolic in Devereaux's office, whatever. We don't mind. There's no reason to kill us."

Blondie shook his head. "Even if I had one drop of trust for a lying demon like you, we don't need prisoners of war. You lot would be a dangerous burden on the rest of us."

"You'll hardly even notice we're around!" I started to say, but the man had already drawn back his hand to cut Nat's throat. I squeezed my eyes shut, oddly regretful.

"Nick, stop!" A commanding voice shouted.

My eyes flew open to see another black clad figure running towards us. Could it be...? But yes! The girl ripped off her mask, letting her dark hair tumble over her shoulders.

"Kitty?" Nathaniel said in dazed confusion.

XXX

It was probably the most awkward moment of my life. On Kitty's orders, we had been grudgingly accepted into the group, but even as we marched side-by-side towards our next target [3. Westminster abbey, where the last of the politicians were holed up, if you were wondering], the Resistance made it clear that it did not trust us. Queezle, Stoggles and I were treated as if we had flesh-eating-disease, while Nat was constantly shoved and tripped by those around him, "accidentally". If that was how they treated allies, I was certainly glad we weren't official enemies any longer.

After a solid hour of explanation, Kitty had finally convinced Nick Drew (as I learned our blond friend was named) that Nat was her husband, and more importantly, a Resistance-sympathizer and informant, which was true as far as she was concerned. Nathaniel had made a few incoherent sounds of bafflement before falling silent and sneaking long considering glances at Kitty and I. I suspected he was beginning to figure out what had happened on his own. As uneasy as the resistance felt towards us, nothing could compare to the distrust between Nat and I. We couldn't help shooting each other scathing glances whenever the other walked too close to Kitty, said something to her, or even looked in her general direction. If we kept it up any longer, she was bound to notice.

Upon reaching the Thames, the company halted. Scouts had sent word that the magicians had combined their efforts and summoned a high-level marid to guard Westminster Bridge, and no one could decide whether to risk fighting their way past, or try taking a long route around and risk the politicians' escaping.

Thus we found ourselves camped out in some abandoned buildings near the river. Out the second story window, I could see the faint glimmer of the guardian spirit pacing up and down the bridge, leaving a smoldering trail of pure, shining power in their wake. Resilience would mean nothing against a creature like this one.

Now that the three of us were finally alone, Nat pulled out his trump card.

"Bartimaeus," he said blandly, "Please go do something useful. Kitty and I have a lot to discuss."

"Go ahead, I don't mind."

"In private."

"I could plug my ears."

"Go!" Nat yelled. I was finally forced to leave.

XXX

The room fell quiet as the djinni slipped away. Nathaniel turned to the girl beside him.

"I missed you," she said quietly, catching his hand and squeezing it gently.

"So did I," he replied, "But I have to admit, I'm still shocked to see you."

"Well, you had to have guessed we'd run into each other. I told Bartimaeus as much."

Cold knots twisted his stomach into a painful bundle. "What, that we might run into each other...because you're a rebel?"

"Oh. You can't pretend to be surprised about that! You handed the government's battle plans to me yourself!"

"So I did," said Nathaniel tersely. "Jog my memory...what else did I do?"

Kitty looked surprised. "Are you uncomfortable with this? I guess handling out intelligence is different than actual battle...Are you worried about going up against your old coworkers? Its okay, the battle's almost over."

"But why? Forgive me; I'm only playing devil's advocate, of course. But why destabilize the state? The fighting will cause even more suffering."

Kitty smiled sadly. "Yes, for a short while. But the Britain we create will be worth it." she sat down in the windowsill, motioning for him to join her. "I never told you because we never got an opportunity, but when I was a child, before I weaseled my way into Makepeace's favour, a magician attacked a friend of mine and me. The justice system refused to do anything about it because he was a magician, and I was just a commoner. _That's_ why I'm doing this. For Jakob and others like him. The magicians are living at the expense of the people, and you and I aren't content to exist that way."

Nathaniel scratched his chin thoughtfully. "So you really are a rebel then."

The knots in his stomach suddenly unwound. Between his wife and his career, the choice was obvious.

"I...if you really think this revolt is best for the country, I trust you," he said. "And I'll help you any way I can."

A warm smile broke over Kitty's face as she leaned in for a soft kiss, and when she retreated, he pulled her back for a second. He could still count the number of their kisses on one hand, and that was simply unacceptable.

"That's what I love about you," she told him, ruffling his hair fondly. "You're glib on the outside, but you have a good heart."

Nathaniel froze, the pleasant butterfly feeling inside him melting away into cold unease. "I wouldn't really call myself _glib_, Kitty."

She laughed. "Oh, what do you call it then? Smartassed? Irreverent? Come on, I know you're secretly proud of it!"

"But...that isn't the only thing you love about me, right?"

"Well, of course not."

"What else?"

Kitty gave him a weird look. "Are you fishing for compliments? I don't need to inflate your head any more than it already is."

"Please," Nathaniel practically begged, "This is important. What else do you love about me?"

Kitty looked him over, concern in her features. "Well, alright. Besides wit? I love your intelligence. Well actually it's more like wisdom, I guess. The things you say sometimes..."she smirked, "It's like you've lived a thousand lives."

"No, no, not that! Something else - tell me something else!"

Kitty gripped the panicking magician's arms. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"There must be something else!" _Something with a little of me in it_, he thought.

"I love you for your convictions as well. You hate the slavery of the magicians as much as I do. Now pull it together Nat, this much self-doubt can't be healthy."

Nathaniel gave her a despairing look.

"What about my education? You admire my learning, my knowledge, the many languages I speak?"

Kitty shrugged dismissively.

"My ambition! What about that?"

"That bugs me a bit, to be honest."

Nathaniel's hands ran rampant through his hair, turning it into an Einsteinian mess.

"My money?" he cried, grasping at straws, "Even that! Please?"

Kitty frowned and crossed her arms tightly across her chest. "Of course not, Nathaniel. Why on Earth would you rather be loved for your money?"

"At least it's mine!"

Kitty rolled her eyes and sighed deeply. "I would still love you if you were poor, or powerless, or unsophisticated, or uneducated, or ugly."

"What if I wasn't even human?" His eyes bored into her.

"Even if you weren't human. Even if you were a talking squid! Now are you satisfied?"

"Don't say that, please don't say that!"

"It's true. Now stop acting like such a diva!"

Nathaniel deflated, his normally rigid posture collapsing in on itself like a custard left out in the sun. Kitty watched in alarm as he walked in a dazed, aimless circle, fretting his sleeves and the ends of his hair.

"I'm sorry, Kitty," he said at last, "There's something I have to go do."

And he kissed her cheek and ran out the door.

XXX

"Tell her."

"Tell who what?" Nat's current appearance had me debating whether or not to go look for a straitjacket. He was sweating like mad, his face red and blotchy, his hair tangled like a thicket of black weeds. The frantic gleam in his eyes was especially alarming. I decided to ignore him, squinting one eye and returning to peer across the river through one of the Resistance's spyglasses. The marid still stood in the centre of the bridge, a featureless black giant cloaked in flickering flame. I had the sneaking suspicion that as the only spirits in the group, Queezle, Stoggles, and I would be called upon to fight it.

"Kitty," said Nathaniel, "Kitty is in love with you, not me."

The spyglass slipped from my numb fingers and shattered on the floor. "What are you talking about?" I asked faintly.

"She just told me she loves me for my wit, my wisdom, and my anti-magician sentiments," Nat said bitterly, "The parts of me which, in short, are actually you. She's in love with you and...and you're in love with her!"

My heart was racing. "Nat, stop."

"You are! And I'm not going to stand between you. I'll be loved for who _I_ am, or not at all!"

"I...that's impossible. I think you're forgetting something. I'm a djinni!"

"Why does that matter? She said outright that she would love me even if I weren't human!"

"She _did_?" I exclaimed before I could school my expression. "But no, there's no way she meant it! People say crazy things like that all the time just to be dramatic."

"Oh? Let's see! Tell her the truth and let her choose between us!"

The words coming out of Nat's mouth were as crazy as his looks. Only someone as unhinged as he was would pay them any attention. I was not crazy. To prove it, I tried to quell the rising hope in my chest, but my efforts were useless. Tell Kitty the truth...I felt lightheaded.

"She'll choose you," I said.

Nathaniel's eyes were full of pain. "No she won't, but thanks anyway."

He pulled on his coat and buttoned it to the chin. "I might be gone for awhile. There's something I have to do. Good luck, Bartimaeus. Say hello to Kitty for me."

"...thanks," I said, but was already out of earshot, running through the camp towards the river.

XXX

My heart pounded in my ears as I pushed the door open. Nathaniel's words played on a loop through my head. Was this it? Was it really _my _qualities that Kitty loved? How would she react to being lied to for so long? My stomach was churning so hard that I suspected my essence was turning to butter.

"Bartimaeus!" The girl herself greeted, "Have you seen Nathaniel? He bolted out of here and I haven't scene him since."

"He said he had to go do something or other." It was a struggle to keep my voice level. I must have been looking at her strangely, because she paused and gave me a scrutinizing once-over.

"Are you alright?" she asked, a little more gently, "You look...agitated."

"Actually..." I said slowly, "I have something on my mind."

This was it. I took a deep breath and looked straight into those dark, questioning eyes.

"Kitty, why do you love Nathaniel?"

A wry smile quirked her lips. "Why is everyone asking me that today?"

"Because...there's something you don't know about him and I. In fact–"

The door slammed open, startling me into silence.

"You two!" Nick yelled, "Come quick! That crazy Mandrake guy is attacking the marid!"

XXX

"That stupid bastard!" Kitty yelled as we raced for the bridge, "If he gets injured, I'm going to kill him!"

We could see them from a long way off. A small, fragile figure with silver spear and tranquilizer gun, against a seven foot silhouette spouting flame from every surface. Nat raised the gun and fired, but the spirit changed into a smoky vapour and let the small dart pass safely through him before resolidifying.

"He doesn't stand a chance," I muttered, doubling my speed.

The marid lunged forward, a gush of flame blasting from its gaping jaw. Nathaniel reeled back, two inches short of being roasted in his own suit.

The creature swiped at him, but the magician was too quick. He darted off to the side and skewered one gnarled foot with his silver spear. The marid howled in rage.

The small victory was Nathaniel's undoing. The infuriated monster struck fast and caught Nat off guard. Time seemed to freeze as the marid's long, twisted claws stabbed deep into the magician's stomach.

"Nathaniel!" Kitty cried his birthname in a ragged shriek. We were still so far away.

Nathaniel's mouth gaped open a little, his eyes glassy with shock. But at Kitty's cry he came to himself, raised his arm, and shot a dart straight into the marid's forehead. The creature roared in pain, stumbling to its knees. Nathaniel winced as its claws ripped from his belly. He raised his arms one last time and stabbed the spear through the marid's heart before collapsing to the ground, shirt soaked in blood.

We reached him a moment later. He was dazed and shivering, his eyes unfocused as Kitty slid to her knees beside him.

"No," her voice was hoarse.

"...Kitty." Nat's voice was faint, as if already drifting to us from the next world.

"Shh, you're going to be fine."

She pressed her hands to the wound to staunch the flow of blood. She still had hope. I, who had seen death a thousand times, knew it was far too late.

Nathaniel's lips, already turning blue, moved wordlessly. I knew what he wanted to ask me. I bent down and whispered in his ear in a voice almost to quiet to be audible.

"I told her, Nat. You're the one she loves, not me."

Nat's breathing gradually slowed, then a faint sigh passed from his lips and he was gone. But I could swear he died with a faint smile tugging at his lips.

A strangled sound came from Kitty, who grabbed his hands and wouldn't let go, as if she could forcefully draw his spirit back to Earth.

Shaking his head, Nick Drew emptied the magician's personal effects from his pockets, handing Kitty the vial and letter.

"One last letter," she choked. Tears ran down her face as she read.

I wanted to reach out and comfort her, rub circles on her back and tell her it would be okay, but my form was already unknitting. And as the currents of the Other Place drew me, I felt further away from her than ever.


	10. The Truth

Disclaimer: The Bartimaeus Trilogy is the Property of Jonathan Stroud. Cyrano de Bergerac was written by Edmond Rostand, but technically since it's in the public domain it belongs to all of us. ^^

A/N: Well, this is it. The final chapter. Looking back, I can't believe I actually thought this story would be short! Now maybe I can finally plunge into NaNoWriMo. Thanks you Lady Noir for your beta work, and thanks, all of you who've been reading and reviewing throughout the story! It's been tons of fun to write Panache. I hope all of you run off and read Cyrano de Bergerac next (if you haven't already) - it's awesome.

* * *

"I really don't think you should go today," said Queezle, pausing from her efforts at sorting Whitwell's files to give me an earnest look.

It was six years after Nathaniel's death, and yes, I was still on Earth.

The brand new commoner's parliament was great – for the commoners. I'm sure many spirits would have expressed their approval as well, if there had been anyone to summon them up to ask their opinion. But for us, well...

Through a bit of skillful maneuvering on her part, Jessica Whitwell, Nat's master, had been kept on to advise the infant commoner's parliament on all matters magical and political, being one of the few people left who had the first clue about either area. And thanks to the brand new interdict on summoning "known hostile" spirits, she'd been forced to abandon her previous posse of djinn and instead employ her deceased apprentice's all-star lineup of defectors who were known to have fought on the side of the commoners on the day of the Great Revolution. No good deed goes unpunished.

And thus, Queezle, Stoggles and I found ourselves as enslaved as ever, to the same old masters, working the same old haunts, doing the same old tasks. It could have been depressing if it hadn't all been so bloody predictable.

There was one highlight to my long, dreary, servitude however. At six o'clock, every Saturday without fail, I would visit Kitty and give her the latest London news.

She had become a recluse. Dwelling in a cottage just outside of London, she spent her time baiting solicitors, stomping on flowers, and writing scathingly bitter political commentary for the newspapers. Everyone knew she had a chip on her shoulder. There was one person, however, who was always a welcome visitor.

And I hadn't missed a visit in six years.

"I'm not about to stop _now_," I told Queezle. "Kitty expects me."

"You have a lot of enemies," she warned, "And I've heard rumors they're planning something. Even Whitwell thinks you should stay in. That's why she keeps telling you to redecorate the kitchen, or wash windows, or tweak the nexus instead of sending you on a _real_ mission."

"They've had six years to make their move," I said, "I'm not exactly worried."

"I've heard _Makepeace_ was spotted today."

"And I'm especially not worried about him."

Makepeace was one of the few magicians who'd never been found, though how one hid a man as ostentatious as that was beyond me. Maybe he was making a living as a circus clown.

"Still, Bartimaeus, it's not good to have such a regular schedule when there are people out to kill you. You're just asking for an ambush."

"I'm going," I said.

At half past five, I slipped out of the house. I dressed Ptolemy in some inconspicuous street clothes and mingled with the late-afternoon crowds, just another Londoner out running errands on a Saturday evening – contrary to what Queezle seemed to think, I was not suicidal.

There was a peculiar optimism in London these days. The people were better dressed, better fed, walked with lighter step, spoke with more enthusiasm...they were no longer powerless in the world.

The new government hadn't worked in everyone's favour of course. In any system, there were always a few who were left behind. Take the shabby peddler woman to my right, for instance. She looked hunched and haunted, swaddled in the filthiest rags in the entire city, and bearing the saggy look of someone who had recently lost half of their body weight.

"Buy a candle, my dear?" she called to me in a voice so quivery and high-pitched that it sounded fake.

"Er, sorry no cash," I told her.

Suddenly, the old lady grabbed my elbow and pulled me towards her.

"Not even for an old friend?"

Goosebumps painted my arms as the peddler spoke, not in her high quivery voice but in one far more mellifluous, deep, and most frighteningly, familiar.

She wasn't a woman at all.

Makepeace pulled back his hood and grinned. He'd lost a lot of teeth since our last encounter, and his loose skin spoke of hard times. His eyes, however, were as sharp as ever.

I ripped my arm away and gave the magician a hard shove backwards. He stumbled into his table of wares, cursing and flinging candles everywhere.

I ran for it.

I hadn't made ten strides down the street when I was jumped by a troupe of beggars who must have been Makepeace's accomplices. I kicked one in the jaw as they tackled me to the ground, and tried to beat off the others with my sole free arm. Useless.

Changing tactics, I switched into the form of a moth. My assailants grasped at empty air in confusion as I fluttered above their heads.

_Whap!_ Makepeace's broad hand slapped me out of the air and I dropped to the cobblestones with crumpled wings. Immediately, I switched to Ptolemy again and tried to make a run for the nearby alleyway.

I was brought up short by a small prick in my forearm, followed by the most searing pain I had ever experienced.

Ptolemy collapsed, scraping his elbows on the stones. I felt like my blood was on fire, and my head full of cotton gauze soaked in acid. Through hazy vision, I could see the feathered end of a small dart sticking out of my skin.

No.

"You coward," I gritted out, "Couldn't kill me without resorting to the commoner's methods?"

Makepeace leered into my face, grinning his toothless grin.

"There, there, my dear fellow. Don't you see? You were supposed to have died with poor old Mandrake. I'm simply finishing the job."

I would have liked to have spat in his face, but my motor skills were quickly deteriorating. I could hardly speak, and the evening light was burning my eyes.

"As lovely as it would be to watch you suffer, I really haven't the time." Makepeace displayed a silver butter-knife. "I'm afraid it's rather dull, but it isn't easy for a person of my current situation to get a hold of silver. Good bye, Bartimaeus."

I shut my eyes against the burning light, against the pain in my skull, against Makepeace's ugly mug. If the old playwright was expecting fear or pleading, he was going to be disappointed. What was the point in that? I had only a few seconds of life left, and I wasn't going to spend them thinking about _him_.

I turned my thoughts to weightier matters. At this very moment, Kitty would be waiting for me, standing by the door. I could imagine how her brow would furrow in irritation at my delay. She'd tap her foot, beat her fingers restlessly against the tabletop. I wished there was some way I could let her know what had happened. To thank her for the years of company, to say: "I won't be coming round again, but I'll be fine, I've lived long enough. Don't worry about me."

I thought of the letter I'd written the day Nathaniel died. Ironic, how now I'd never get to say goodbye, while the very farewell letter I'd written years ago still lay in Kitty's pocket, posing as Nathaniel's last parting words. I wondered who between us was the most unfortunate; Nat, who'd never really had a chance to say anything to her, or me, whose words existed, but were ascribed to someone else.

Makepeace was certainly taking his time killing me. I'd been expecting the knife-edge to lick my throat for some time now. I didn't have the energy to force my eyes open, but now that I thought of it, there did seem to be some sounds of struggle audible above the thumping in my ears.

It took the effort of Atlas to lift one heavy eyelid, but as I did so, I was rewarded with the sight of Makepeace struck down by a smoldering blue Inferno, beautiful even to my bleary, unfocused vision. One of the thugs ran flailing through my field of vision, a blue spiky thing that looked remarkably like Stoggles latched onto his head.

"Bartimaeus!" Queezle was suddenly at my side, shaking me like a rag-doll, "I knew you'd get yourself into trouble if we didn't follow you around like babysitters! What did I tell – Wait, what is that? Is that X4?"

She yanked the dart from my arm and stared at it in horror.

"Is Makepeace dead?" I asked. The whiplash seemed to have cleared my head temporarily. "Ah, that gooey patch must be him. Nice work."

The dart fell from Queezle's fingers, and she latched onto my shoulders, holding me at arms length. Her valkyrie form, for some reason, had long black claws that dug painfully into my skin. I didn't have the strength to shrug her off.

"You're so pale! Are you sure it's X4? What are we going to do? There must be something! Lie back down! What should I do?"

"Thanks, but you've already done it." I made a loose, drunken gesture towards Makepeace's remains. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment to keep."

"Are you insane? You're about to keel over!"

"Queezle," I said wobbling to my feet, "I only have a few hours to live. I hope you won't be shattered if I don't spend them with you."

The muscle-bound valkyrie held me back. "No, stop! We need to get you back to Whitwell!"

I ripped my arms from her grasp and sprinted down the street. The imp and valkyrie ran after me, but I soon outstripped them. Like a final sputter of flame before a candle dies out, I had found one last burst of energy. I only hoped it was enough to take me all the way to Kitty.

XXX

"My, aren't you late!"

There was Kitty, seated on her front steps, arms crossed, one brow raised in challenge. It was a combative posture, but I hardly noticed. I'd never been happier to see anything in my life.

"I don't think you've ever been late before; it must be a special occasion. I was going to give you an award for punctuality, but I'm afraid I'll have to revoke your nomination."

I didn't reply. I was too busy catching my breath.

"Really though, what took you so long?"

"I...got waylaid by an unwelcome creditor," I said.

Kitty wrapped a finger around the handle of the mug of tea that balanced on her knee. "What? How can _you_ owe someone money? Do you even use money?"

I shrugged, "There are some debts we all have to pay."

"Well, did you pay him?"

I smiled grimly. "Not yet, I told him I had an appointment I wouldn't miss for anything, and to come back in an hour. He was persistent, but I think I convinced him to hold off until then."

Kitty fell silent, and I made no attempt at conversation. It was soothing, just to look at her. Her eyes pensive, her hair wild and windblown, a few stray strands caught in her eyelashes. As I continued to watch her, Kitty began to fidget restlessly.

"Are you okay? You look really worn out."

I nodded wordlessly and finally slumped down beside her. My stabbing headache was returning. Kitty must have realized something was wrong, for concern immediately flooded her face. Gently, she cupped my chin and peered into my eyes as if she could interpret the thoughts that flashed across them. Perhaps she really could.

"I'm fine," I told her, trying to exude an aura of good health.

"You're a lot paler than normal."

"Oh it's nothing. Whitwell's been keeping me inside lately, that's all."

Kitty was silent a few minutes, then finally released me. "If you're sure you're okay...so then, can I get you some tea?"

She always asked, and I always refused. Rituals had become important to us. At my customary refusal, she relaxed and took a sip from her mug.

"Well," she said, leaning back on her elbows, "Tell me. What's been happening in the wide world recently?"

"Time for Bartimaeus' weekly news report?" I asked. "Alright, let's see...Sunday: Harold Button proposes to Anne Stephens and is refused."

"Oh, poor Harold."

"Monday: Harold Button proposes to Jessica Whitwell and is refused."

Kitty raised an eyebrow.

"Tuesday: Rebecca Piper and Nicholas Drew have a fistfight on the floor of parliament. Nick Drew announces he intends to run for Prime Minister and is pelted with fetid vegetables."

Kitty snickered.

"Wednesday: Stoggles drinks an entire bottle of cleaning fluid. Whitwell performs the Heimlich maneuver on an imp. Harold Button proposes to Rebecca Piper and is refused."

"The world is insane."

"Thursday: Harold Button proposes to Helen Malbindi and is accepted."

"What_, really?_"

"He was pretty keen on finding a wife, apparently."

Kitty shook her head. "I think we're the only two sane people left, Bart. Alright, go on."

"Friday..." I said, "Friday–"

I lost my train of thought as a spasm of pain racked through me. Though I wasn't cold, I couldn't stop shivering. Kitty reached out to steady me, and her hand felt like fire.

"What's wrong?" she said.

"It's...argh...It's nothing. Whitwell's kept me here awhile; my essence pinches a bit. There, see? It's over."

I was running out of time. Enough fooling around, there was a particular reason I'd come here today. I took a deep breath to regain my strength.

"Kitty," I asked steadily, "Do you still have that letter Nathaniel wrote you? His last letter?"

She looked surprised, then flushed. "Of course I still have it."

"You've never shown it to me before. Can I read it?"

Kitty's eyes grew round and she stammered. "Now? _Why?_ It's kind of personal!"

"Please?"

I must have looked absolutely desperate, because after one long, considering gaze, she relented.

As she disappeared into the house, my heart rate doubled. The pure adrenaline running through my veins masked the slow progression of the poison, and was perhaps the only thing keeping me from passing out altogether. I got up and began to pace.

"Here," she said, pressing the fragile paper into my hand, "Be careful with it, okay?"

Here it was, the words arranged in slanting lines, just as I remembered them. A chill ran through me at the unfamiliar red stain that smeared through them.

Nat's blood.

I cleared my throat.

"Dear Kitty..." I began.

"Oh," My companion said weakly, "You're going to read it out loud?"

Impossible that Kitty could not hear my heart clanging against my ribs. I continued, my voice growing softer and softer until I was nearly whispering.

"I'm not going to live much longer. Forgive my melodramatic mood, but tonight, as I think about the inevitable end, I feel the pressing weight of all my unfinished business. Of everything I've never had the courage to tell you. I'll say it now, hiding behind the written word: I love you, and it's painful to acknowledge that we will soon be wrenched apart."

"The way you read that..." Kitty murmured.

Our eyes met over the paper, and a kind of burning shot through me. I couldn't stop looking at her; at her lips, slightly parted, her shoulders rising and falling with uneven breaths, in her eyes a smoldering expression that fixed me in place.

"Stay strong, Kitty," I continued, still not able to look away, "Perhaps long after you've grown old, after you've seen the world, raised your children, written all of your novels and won a couple of Nobel prizes, your soul will drift up to wherever mine is waiting, and we'll be together again. Until that day comes, I'll be waiting for you..."

"Bartimaeus," Kitty whispered faintly, "How are you reading that? You're not even looking at the paper."

I glanced down at the letter in my hand.

"You know it by heart."

"Kitty..."

"All this time, it was you who wrote the letters!"

"I..."

"And on the balcony...that was you, too, wasn't it?"

"No," I said, panic running through me, "You're wrong."

Kitty stiffened. "Are you going to deny it? Tell me you don't love me!"

I stared at her a long while.

Deny it?

"I can't."

Silence fell at my admission. Kitty's cheeks were flushed with colour, her breath growing shallow and more rapid as she worked herself up into near-hysteria.

"Six years!" she cried, "All of this time you pretended to be just a friendly acquaintance, dropping by to give the news! Why did you never say anything?" She smacked the page. "These words are yours!"

"Yes, but the blood is his!"

A deafening silence followed my shout, and together we stared at the bloodstained letter. My head was spinning, whether from anxiety or the poison, I'd never know.

"You let me think Nathaniel wrote this because...because after he died, you didn't have the heart to shake my feelings for him."

"He wanted you to love him so badly."

Kitty closed her eyes. "A foolish sort of selflessness."

I nodded, steadying myself against a post to keep from falling over. I hadn't much time left.

"Why did you ask to read the letter?" Kitty whispered, leaning in close, "Why confess now, after six years?"

"Why?" I rubbed my forearm, where the puncture wound burned. "Kitty..."

A grating voice echoed across the garden.

"There 'e is!"

My head shot up to find Stoggles and Queezle running towards us. Kitty jumped back, flushing red.

"What are you two doing here?" she asked.

"It's Bartimaeus," Stoggles said respectfully, "'e's very ill, ma'am. Went an' got 'iself attacked by Makepeace!"

The valkyrie lunged forward, snatched my wrist and began counting out my pulse, scolding all the time.

"You idiot! How can you think to run forty kilometers when you're dying?"

"He's _what_?" Kitty's face drained white.

My body decided this would be a good time for my knees to give out. I pitched forward into Kitty's arms, limp and shivering.

"Ah," I mumbled, "I never finished my news report. Saturday, seven-fifteen pm: Bartimaeus of Uruk dies of X4 poisoning." With effort, I rolled up my sleeve and revealed the small red mark on my arm. Strange, that something so small could be so fatal.

Kitty gripped my arm, running her thumb gently over the puncture. "My God...we have to get you back to Whitwell! If she sends you back to the Other Place–"

"It's no use, Kitty," My voice seemed tinny and far away in my failing ears, "You know that. It poisons the essence. If they send me back, I'll just die over there."

"Stop talking like that! There has to be a way!"

I didn't reply. I was too busy figuring out whether my eyes were currently open or closed. And whether or not I was floating upside-down, for that matter.

"No. _No_. I already lost you once when Nathaniel died. I'm not letting you die again."

"I can't exactly help it, Kitty." The pain had slipped away, replaced with cold numbness.

"No!"

"I'm sorry."

_"No!"_

The last image my eyes could resolve was that of Kitty shaking her head, Kitty turning away, Kitty running into house...

"Please don't go," I wanted to tell her.

But my body slipped from my grasp entirely...and as Kitty deserted my dying form, so did I.

And all was nothing.

X

XXX

X

Numb cold. Vertigo and dissolution, time flowing in spirals. Sound spun and wove together: first a knot of shrill tinnitus, then a thread of rushing wind, and a faint musical strain, like monks on a mountaintop. The sensation of pins and needles was the first thing to break through the haze, feeling sharp and real compared to the hallucinations floating through and around me. Then suddenly everything was spinning, tilting, rushing towards me, and I popped into consciousness as easily as if someone had flipped a switch in my head.

I was lying flat on my back on a cold floor, in the centre of an intricate pentacle that I didn't recognize. Flaming candles encircled me, a smoking bowl of frankincense lay by my feet, and if I wasn't mistaken, I had been sprinkled with lavender.

A folded up bit of paper had been tucked under my elbow, and I looked at it curiously. It was a homemade greeting card, with a distorted looking imp holding a bouquet of flowers scrawled in crayon on the front. _Get well soon!_ It read inside.

"That was from Stoggles, if you're wondering," someone drawled.

Of course, I recognized it now – I was in Whitwell's study, and those spike-heeled feet by my head were attached to the sour-faced lady herself.

I sat up, rubbing my throbbing head. "If this is the afterlife, I'm disappointed."

"You aren't dead," Whitwell said brusquely. She knelt down and poked my arm with the tip of her pen, then scribbled something on her clipboard. "You've been unconscious for several days. How do you feel?"

"Perplexed. _Why_ aren't I dead?"

"Subject appears to be in full control of its faculties," Whitwell mumbled to herself, scribbling on the clipboard again.

"Listen here, did I get hit with X4 or not?"

"Of course you did."

"I feel fine."

"Of course you do."

I threw my hands up in despair. "Are you going to tell me what happened or not?"

A sly expression stole over the magician's emaciated face.

"Oh, that's not really my place. But if you're feeling up to it, there's a young lady wandering in the garden who'd be happy to explain. She refused to go home and sleep. Eventually I got fed up and kicked her out. Not that it helps – she just lurks out back all day."

I stood up so fast that I almost lost my balance.

"Take it easy," Whitwell warned.

Easy? Yeah, right. Without a glance backward, I ran out the door.

XXX

Outside, dawn was breaking. The air was still cool, and damp grass clung to the soles of my feet as I raced across the lawn, in search of Kitty. I spotted her under a willow tree, watching pink light creep over the horizon.

"I think it's going to be sunny, today," I said, strolling up casually behind her.

She whirled around.

"Bartimaeus, you're awake! Jessica never – but how are you? Are you alright? Just look at you, up and walking around already! I can hardly believe it; for a moment I thought you were going to die!"

She ceased babbling, threw her arms around me and buried her face in my neck. My heart stuttered.

After a moment's hesitation, I wrapped my arms around her waist and closed my eyes. It was the closest we'd ever been. She smelled of rain.

"I thought so too," I mumbled into her hair, "In fact, I'm still confused on that point."

She pulled back and grinned impishly.

"Of course you are. You don't know about this, yet!"

She held a little vial before my eyes. It was empty, just a small corked glass with a near-illegible label. I felt as if I'd seen it before.

"That was Nat's, wasn't it?" I asked. "I remember him showing it to me."

Kitty nodded. "It was in his pocket; they gave it to me along with the letter when he died, do you remember? Read the label."

I squinted. "_Experimental Serum 9507_...I think. Honestly, Tiresias had better handwriting than Nat, and he was blind."

Kitty watched my face expectantly, then raised an eyebrow.

"Don't you get it?" she asked. "It's an antidote to X4. Or at least, an attempt at one. That's what the government had him working on before the Revolution began."

_"What?"_

"I suppose he never had the opportunity to test it. You're the world's first recipient."

I rubbed the side of my face. "Huh, so that's why Whitwell was prodding me like a lab rat." I took the vial from her hand and held it up to the light. "It would have been nice to know there was a cure available," I grumbled, "It would have spared me a lot of mental stress."

"Well, I didn't realize there was still X4 circulating through the populace. I didn't think we'd need it. I didn't even know it worked – I only kept it as something to remember Nat by. You're lucky I even thought to administer it to you. And even then I still had to drag you to Whitwell! It took her three hours of hocus-pocus before you were stabilized."

"I imagine there was a lot of chanting involved."

"You have no idea."

Absently, I rolled the vial between my fingers.

"So Nat made this, eh? If I remember correctly, he offered it to me just before the attack." I studiously examined the ground and clenched the glass tighter in my fist. "I didn't know he was so sentimental."

"He was a good guy. Even if he wasn't who I thought he was. Isn't it interesting how he never informed the government that he'd found a potential cure?"

"And he brought it with him. He must have been worried one of us would be infected in the battle. Say what you will about Nat, not every master cares like that for his slaves."

Kitty smiled a wobbly smile. "I guess I owe Nat more than I realized. Seeing that X4 wound was the most horrible experience of my life. For a moment, I was certain I was going to lose you. When I thought of the vial, I nearly tore the house apart searching for it."

I shook my head. "I can't believe I thought you were abandoning me when you ran inside."

Kitty watched my face, soft and thoughtful. Then with a smile, she caught hold of my shirt and tugged me toward her.

"Come here, you."

I let myself be drawn into her warm aura, savored the dance of hands on skin as she slowly wrapped her arms around my neck. She bowed her head and breathed deeply, eyelashes fluttering against cheeks.

I couldn't wait any longer.

I cradled the back of her head and suddenly dipped her backwards. A yep of surprise slipped from Kitty's lips as she scrambled to hang on. Then, with a little sigh, she melted into the form of my body, and a small, tender something between my ribs swelled because she was kissing me back and we were together as we were always meant to be.

It was a moment I had been waiting for my whole life. There was no reality apart from Kitty; her hot skin and the soft sounds from her throat.

"Ahem."

I cursed Whitwell's prim cough. The withered magician had snuck up on us unawares, like a matronly escort supervising her charges. She stood with hands on hips and arched a greying eyebrow. Like guilty schoolchildren, Kitty and I jumped apart.

Whitwell was not perturbed. "If you're quite finished, I have an offer to make you, Bartimaeus."

"Oh _really_." In a fit of petulance, I kept my arm wrapped around Kitty's waist. Let it bother Whitwell; she didn't have to interrupt.

Whitwell just smirked. "In light of your...situation, I've decided to release you from your duties to me."

I nearly fell over. "Are you serious?"

"Of course. Don't be daft, there are always more servants."

While I was still gaping, Whitwell straightened up, waving her arms about in that melodramatic way magicians are so fond of.

"Bartimaeus of Uruk," she intoned, "I command you to do whatever you think best, with no loyalty nor obligation to man nor spirit, save what you choose of your own will to bestow." She brushed her hands off and winked. "There you go. Now have fun."

I backed away nervously. It was slightly creepy, how she kept staring at the two of us with fond, glowing eyes. Who would have guessed there was a soppy heart beneath that shriveled, leathery exterior?

Hesitantly, I turned to Kitty. "I...guess that means we're free to go wherever we want, now."

Her smile was enigmatic. "I suppose it does. So then, would you care to join me?" She held up her palm, and I took it without bothering asking where we were going. That was besides the point.

"Well, we'll be seeing you around, I guess," I told Whitwell, "Thanks for the magic life support and all that."

Whitwell nodded courteously.

As Kitty led me from the garden, I received a sharp jab directly in the ribs.

"Hey," I complained, "What's that for? We're supposed to be living happily ever after, you know."

"Oh, we will," said Kitty, kissing my cheek, "That's for announcing your death so theatrically. _"Bartimaeus dies of X4 poisoning..."_ Were you trying to give me a heart attack?"

"Ah," I corralled her in for another soft kiss, and then another. "I suppose I'm not entirely innocent."

"Certainly not." Her hands found their way into my hair, and her mouth stole my breath away, cheeky smile never departing from her lips.

That's Kitty for you. And I wouldn't have it any other way.


End file.
